Health promotion research can be broad in scope and can cover a vast array of topics, settings and populations. As Co-Director of the Centre for Health Promotion Research at Leeds Beckett University, I can vouch for this diversity. Just looking over the past few years, our Centre’s research portfolio includes studies focussing on prison health; volunteering and health; burnout in employees; e-cigarettes; physical activity in children; homelessness; mental health; condom distribution schemes; toothbrushing; self-care; poverty; climate change…..the list goes on.
While at first glance, these projects may seem completely disparate they all, in fact, constitute health promotion research. For me, the litmus test is whether a research project gives us greater understanding of the determinants of health. If a study has the potential to help understanding of health inequalities and (more importantly) potentially provide evidence-based policy and practice implications to reduce health inequalities in communities – then this, in my view, constitutes health promotion research. Critics would argue that such a definition is useless as conceivably ‘anything’ and ‘everything’ can have impacts on health – but health promotion itself is a very broad-church, highly multidisciplinary, drawing on a range of academic disciplines. Health promotion research, therefore, must mirror this.
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