Health related behavior in health promotion: utilizing the concept of self care

The concepts of health promotion and seif care have common origins.Both represent new thinking about the roles of the professionaland lay sectors in health protection. The two concepts developedquite d however. The concept of self care did not attain thesame level of legitimacy and stability as health promotion,which has evolved from an alternative approach to the dominanceof traditional disease prevention into a rapidly developinghealth field. The emergence of the concept of self care andthe reasons for its relative lack of acceptance are dLtcussed.It is concluded that the concept of self care is logically alliedwith the field of health promotion and serves an important functionin optimiz ing health related behavior.