Future perspectives – closing remarks

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability of our health care systems as well as our societies. During the year of 2020, we have witnessed how whole societies globally have been in a turbulent state of transformation finding strategies to manage the difficulties caused by the pandemic. At first glance, the health promotion perspective might seem far away from handling the serious impacts caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as health promotion is about enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, paradoxically health promotion seems to be ever more important in times of crisis and pandemics. Probably, in the future, pandemics will be a part of the global picture along with the non-communicable diseases. These facts strongly demand the health care services to reorient in a health promoting direction.

The IUHPE Global Working Group on Salutogenesis suggests that health promotion competencies along with a reorientation of professional leadership towards salutogenesis, empowerment and participation are required. More specifically, the IUHPE Group recommends that the overall salutogenic model of health and the concept of SOC should be further advanced and applied beyond the health sector, followed by the design of salutogenic interventions and change processes in complex systems.