سابقه سلامت: ابزار کشف نشده برای تغییر و بهبود سلامت History in health: health promotion’s underexplored tool for change

Introduction Change is a fundamental tenet of health promotion and is at the heart of the Ottawa Charter’s key action areas of developing healthy public policy, creation of supportive environments, strengthening community action, development of personal skills and reorientation of health services.1 While health promotion practitioners and researchers have drawn on multiple disciplines and sectors in their quest to implement personal and societal change towards health and wellbeing, there is one discipline that has rarely been called upon. History. In this paper, I examine the literature to outline why and how history has been underutilised in health promotion and consider the possibilities history presents. I draw on Sheard’s2 phrase, history in health, and on various precedents and practices to argue history that deeply analyses the sociopolitical structures and processes and which challenges the myths of our inherited wisdoms and narratives, can be a useful tool for health promotion. There are some caveats to this argument that I will explore throughout, in particular in regards to notions that history is never value-free and thus, needs to be used carefully and thoughtfully. First a word on terminology. History is a discipline with which historians identify. Most historians would also recognise ‘history’ as meaning a product or story as told by a historian, drawn from systematically analysing and interpreting events and documents from the past to provide meaning.3 Traditional historical research is undertaken though a rigorous process of identifying authentic and relevant primary sources (data produced at the time of past events) and analysing these to identify points of agreement/disagreement from which to construct a meaningful narrative.3 However, common usage of the word ‘history’ conflates the story with the past itself. Throughout this paper, I use ‘history’ to: 1) describe the discipline and practice of undertaking historical research; as well as 2) the interpretations of past events and factors as found in a historical product, such as a book. As such, I recognise that ‘history’ incorporates multiple stories and is rarely singular or uncontested. I also recognise ‘health promotion’ has had various meanings, theoretically and in practice.4 Throughout this paper, I refer to health promotion as detailed in the Ottawa Charter.