Empowerment in health Promotion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Empowerment in health Promotion - Essay Example In most cases, empowerment is usually associated with feminism. These affected persons may be empowered on individual or community levels (Lee 22). Therefore, the person intending to empower either individual or the community must initiate the process by identifying the groups affected and then evaluating the nature of the discrimination involved. Individual empowerment is equally empowering a community since the empowered individual will reflect the same change initiated in the same community thereby affecting the entire community, group, or society. Empowerment often aims at enhancing an individual’s capacity to transform and make an informed choice on the already available choices towards a desired action to effect an appropriate outcome (Linhorst 51). The universal aim of individual empowerment is to initiate an action or process that builds an individual and his collective assets towards improving fairness and efficiency of institutional and organizational contexts that govern the use of the targeted assets (Minkler 59). In healthcare institutions, integrative medicine practitioners often empower individuals to take actives roles towards their own their health care as well as the ultimate decision makers. Moreover, they also encourage their patients to be responsible towards maintaining their individual health. Numerous health care agencies advocate for patient centered health care provision. For instance, according to the National Academy of Science, patients should be given adequate and necessary information as an opportunity for them to exercise a degree of control on their health care decisions. It further argues that health care systems should readily accommodate the differences in the patients’ preferences and encouraging shared decision making among the patients (Linhorst 72). Additionally, patients should be allowed access to their unfettered medical information and clinical knowledge.