Health-related lifestyle advice: critical insights

Abstract

This article situates itself within contemporary public health workforce development issues and provides critical insights into the newly developed roles of health trainers and the wider practice of health-related lifestyle advice. It highlights a number of contradictions and paradoxes in relation to health-related lifestyle advice, in terms of the organisation of the public body in intervention targets, in terms of choice and risk, of the power relation it involves and in terms of the dichotomy between professionalisation and personalisation of public health messages. The analysis highlights the competing discourses of expertise on the one side, and empowerment, autonomy and independence on the other. It is likely that, rather than enforcing only one kind of narrative, health trainer roles would realise a greater liberating potential by facilitating the navigation between different sets of realities at different times and different geographical, cultural and conceptual places.

Keywords:

• empowerment
• health promotion
• risk