Empowerment: the holy grail of health promotion?

TLDR

Empowerment is seen as a promising health‑promotion strategy, yet its lack of a clear theoretical basis, varied interpretations, measurement challenges, and structural barriers limit its practical application. The authors aim to advance the discussion by proposing a set of assertions defining empowerment’s components, processes, and outcomes, and by distinguishing psychological from community empowerment. They develop a conceptual framework that delineates these assertions and introduces a model of community empowerment to guide future research. The presented assertions and community‑empowerment model are intended to clarify the concept and address its current ambiguities in health‑promotion practice.

Abstract

Potentially, empowerment has much to offer health promotion. However, some caution needs to be exercised before the notion is wholeheartedly embraced as the major goal of health promotion. The lack of a clear theoretical underpinning, distortion of the concept by different users, measurement ambiguities, and structural barriers make 'empowerment' difficult to attain. To further discussion, this paper proposes several assertions about the definition, components, process and outcome of 'empowerment', including the need for a distinction between psychological and community empowerment. These assertions and a model of community empowerment are offered in an attempt to clarify an important issue for health promotion.