Health Promoting Hospitals

The mission of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion in Hospitals and Health Care is to support the development of hospitals and other health care institutions in Europe and other regions of the world into healthy and health promoting settings and organisations. The vision of Health Promoting Health Care Institutions includes 4 dimensions: good quality treatment and care in a healthy health care setting; extending treatment of actual diseases towards disease prevention and promotion of positive health; strengthening patient orientation towards empowering patients to take control over the factors that influence their healthhealthy workplaces for staffstrong partners for public health in the communitieshealthy and sustainable organisations.

The centre pursues this mission by providing technical/scientific support: Organising knowledge, fostering communication on Health Promotion in hospitals and health care through conferences, workshops, newsletters and a website, presenting and publishing concepts, experiences and strategies for implementation and by initiating and co-ordinating innovative research and development projects.

The Centre is committed to the values of the Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion, stressing autonomy, self-determination and (democratic) participation as prerequisites for sustainable health, and to the Settings Approach for Health Promotion. The Centre is committed to principles of thorough scientific research, but also to a model of applied science for evidence-based quality improvement in health care (based on the principle of best available evidence).