Empowerment, Health Promotion and Young People : A Critical Approach

Globally, young people’s health is an increasing priority area for health practitioners, policy-makers and researchers, and concepts of empowerment feature strongly in international public health discourses on young people’s health. Yet the concept of empowerment remains under-theorized, and its relationship to young people’s health is not well understood. This innovative volume critically examines the concept of empowerment and its relationship to young people’s health.

Empowerment, Health Promotion and Young People is set out in two main parts. Part one examines differing conceptions of power and empowerment and how these concepts have been variously defined and used in relation to young people’s health and health promotion. Part two offers a new theoretical framework for understanding empowerment as it relates to young people’s health. Drawing together key works in the field and findings from an empirical enquiry on young people’s health, this framework looks at health as it is defined by young people themselves, and offers new directions for empowerment, and critical insights into the field of young people’s health and health promotion.

Critically engaging with the concept of power and opening up the debate about the relevance and effectiveness of using contemporary understandings of empowerment to promote health, this book is suitable for researchers and students of health, sociology, education and youth studies interested in young people’s health and health promotion.