Page 12 - HPP

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FUTURE-ORIENTED HEALTH PROMOTION
5. MOST ESSENTIAL COMPETENCIES IN THE FUTURE HP
Kaija Matinheikki-Kokko & Arja Liinamo
What kind of health promotion (HP) competencies do practitioners and specialists consider important in the future, in Estonia and Finland? This question was answered by 839 participants (n=588 from Finland, n=249 from Estonia) who lled in the HPP online questionnaire in spring 2017. The participants represented national, regional and local public authorities, enterprises, schools and higher education institutions and NGOs or other interest groups. The IUHPE Core Competencies and Professional Standards for Health Promotion (Dempsey, Battel-Kirk, Barry et al. 2011; IUHPE 2016) created a main conceptual framework with nine competence domains in the HPP questionnaire. The analysed data of HPP focus groups interviews was also used to design the HPP questionnaire added with the latest results of the international health promotion literature review.
The respondents in Estonia and in Finland shared their anticipation for the most essential competencies demanded in the future, to a large extent. Generally, the Estonian respondents evaluated all demands for future HP competencies higher compared to Finnish respondents, except in the domain of Enable Change. The mean of all valid cases are indicated in Figure 2. The top-three competencies for future HP on the domain level are as follows:
1. Enable change towards health and well-being, 2. Knowledge / Awareness,
3. Communication.
These competencies can be seen as three trends expected to t for future demands of needs and competencies faced in the eld. On the other hand, these competencies can also be interpreted as transformative trends and drivers in the eld. Increased competencies among professionals will speed up change, communicating and being highly aware of the factors promoting health and well-being of people over the coming ten years.