Making a profession of health promotion? Grounds for trust and health promotion ethics

Abstract

Many within the occupational group of health education and health promotion specialists are concerned to establish it as a ‘profession’; partly, at least, to try and confer ethical legitimacy on what they are involved in doing. Equally, many non-specialist health promoters (for example, doctors and nurses) are grappling with the question of how to incorporate health promotion as a professional activity within their ‘traditional’ professional roles. Here we outline a convincing argument as to why professions can reasonably be seen to be ethically grounded. But we suggest that this argument cannot be applied to health promotion. Indeed, attempting to do so in the case of non-specialist health promoters seems to risk the ethical credibility of their ‘primary profession’. And in the case of health education and health promotion specialists, other grounds for moral legitimacy and ‘professional authority’(if they exist) must be sought.

Key words:

• ethics
• health promotion
• professions
• professionalism
• professionalisation