Toward an ethic of empowerment for health promotion

Abstract

This paper lays out a conceptual framework for articulating some main ethical issues raised by health promotion and illness prevention. Building from the concept of ‘enabling’ in the Ottawa Charter, the paper articulates and advocates an ‘ethic of empowerment’ for health promotion. If health promotion is understood in terms of enabling, the tired ethical debates between freedom and responsibility, or individual and community, are recast in a new and more productive light. Health promotion should resist the temptations of either a coercive, paternalistic ethic or an individualistic, laissez-faire ethic in favour of an ethic of enabling or empowerment.