Health care and health promotion in southern Italian communities.

Health promotion projects may be regarded as responses to insufficient health care in Europe, where modern health problems, consumer needs, participation and life quality are neglected. In Southern Italy and especially in Naples the situation is particularly difficult (poverty, poor accessibility of health care, high infant mortality, epidemics etc.); nevertheless there exist elements of everyday life which are advantageous for health promotion. The health projects described started around Naples in the 'seventies. They focused on the psychosocial problems of marginalized people (elderly people, women, mentally and physically handicapped men, big families etc.). Different elements of health care (prevention, primary health care, health education), social work and political and cultural activation were linked together in the local centres of social medicine. Thus the accessibility of health care was improved, social distance between suppliers and users reduced, and poor and disadvantaged people better integrated into the social life of the community. One important step in the realization of such aims was the stimulation of politically and socially defined homogeneous target groups with similar interests and needs. The specific measures, organizational structures and the personal staff are directed to these target groups in an integrated way. They are based on the teamwork of different professions and cooperation with other related organizations, and they include explicitly political, social and cultural activities, different from the self-help activities related only to health in most of Central Europe.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)