MarÃa del Pilar Marcos MartÃnez
Public Medical Center Petrel ,Spain
Title: Positive health: Looking at our communities
Biography
Biography: MarÃa del Pilar Marcos MartÃnez
Abstract
Positive health is a way of looking at the actions with care in order to improve everything that people, families and communities can do to take care of their own health. Positive health and wellbeing of our population should be one of the most important targets nowadays. As Michael Marmot said, “If the major determinants of health are social, so must be the remedies”. This social understanding is central to the process of change to reduce the burden of disease. How we can make it possible and why it is so important is the purpose of my intervention. It’s really essential to reduce inequalities in health and wellbeing by attending our communities in a complete perspective. I live in a town which has 35,000 citizens. It has two public medical centers and I work in one of them. It is mostly an urban population, but it also has a big rural region. The nearest hospital is at about 10 minutes by car. We try to prepare and develop activities to our community at any time during the year; but we specially perform an intensive week of community activities once a year. The main goal is to improve conditions of life referring to wellness. It is essential to look at the population, to review the overarching principles of good practice, detect local needs and priorities, identify the available assets and choose the kind of actions to implement. Other relevant element is the involvement of different members of society such as politicians and the education system. How we educate and socialize our children is really important to get a future healthy population. Making strong links between all of them could be interesting to be successful. Community activities are essential to obtain efficient interventions.