The Potential for Promoting Health with Local Communities: General Practice and the Primary Health Care Team

Abstract

When the words ‘health’ and ‘local’ are considered together, many people think of their GP or the primary health care team (PHCT) at their local health centre. And so it is assumed that, at a local level, general practice is a natural and particularly suitable setting for promoting health. This has certainly been the UK government’s thinking in recent years — Health of the Nation, A Strategy for Health in England, prioritises the role of the PHCT in promoting better health and preventing sickness (DoH, 1992), and the renegotiation of the GP contract in 1990 made health promotion a formal and distinct part of a doctor’s duties (DoH, 1990). Furthermore, as part of the UK government’s policy of promoting a primary-care-led NHS, GPs have been given a central role in needs assessment and commissioning for the health of local populations. But, what is health promotion within a general practice context?