Ottawa Charter Research Paper

Words: 999
Pages: 4

The Ottawa charter is an international agreement that was organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Ottawa, Canada. It aimed to achieve the goal of “Health for All” by the year 2000 and beyond. There are five action areas in the Ottawa charter that play a key role in the promotion of good health. They are: developing personal skills, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, re-orienting health care services and building healthy public policy. When applying all of the action areas of the Ottawa Charter to specific areas, such as in the reduction of road injuries, all action areas contribute to reduction of road injuries by advocating health to the public, enable everyone to be able to access health care/health …show more content…
By educating people of risk taking behaviours in the area of road use, in particular speeding and drink driving, it can hopefully have an impact in reducing road injuries. There are many campaigns that provide information about the risks of unsafe driving, and the ‘speeding campaign’ is just one example that explains the difference that 5km/h makes to an accident. Another example of a campaign that allows responders to become aware of possible road risks is the ‘country speeding campaign’ which aims to remove myths about ‘knowing’ the conditions of the roads that people drive on, meaning that people must become more aware of the potential risks that could happen anywhere. The ‘notes campaign’ targets young adults (from 17-25 year old’s) by spreading ‘scary’ statistics about mortality rates of speeding from driving, in the hope of encouraging them to learn not to speed from a young age. There are also a number of both of these campaigns aimed to spread awareness and promote health through spreading information through communities and to individual people to make them more informed about the decisions that they choose to make when driving on …show more content…
These education programs target young adults who are at the cusp of learning to drive, and are aimed at improving their capability to make smarter decisions on the road such as not speeding, drink driving, driving while tired, using their phone while driving or not wearing a seatbelt, which are just a few common examples of the highest mortality causing factors as stated in “Factors Contributing to Crashes among Young Drivers”, (Lyndel J. Bates, Jeremy Davey, Barry Watson, Mark J. King and Kerry Armstrong, 2014). In all road deaths in 2016 in NSW, 15.5% of them were caused by drink driving, 21.1% of people were killed due to fatigue, and 41.8% of people were killed due to speeding (Transport for NSW: Crash and casualty statistics, 2017) which necessitates the imperativeness of making people more aware of these risks, thereby less likely to perform these risk taking behaviours. Knowledge and skills via education is a successful action area of the Ottawa charters ultimate goal, and when applied to road usage, it is an excellent tool in the prevention and reduction of road