When we speak of environments favourable to the promotion of healthy lifestyles, there are four that have been identified as being key to encouraging citizens to make choices that will result in greater benefits to health.
The environments presented are: physical, sociocultural, political and economic.
Four environments
Awareness sessions
Four Environments
Below are some examples of each:
Physical environment
- Climate
- Infrastructures
Sociocultural environment
- Social norms
- Values and beliefs
Political environment
- Rules and regulations
- Agreements between organizations
Economic environment
- Price of food
- Access to employment
All these elements can influence the adoption of healthy lifestyles or access to the services or goods that can facilitate better choices for each individual. It is also important to mention that the decisions made in one environment can also have an impact on the other environments.
Awareness Sessions
Over the coming months, visits to the communities will be organized to raise awareness among the various organizations on the environments favourable to healthy lifestyles.
The primary objective of those visits is to inform the organizations, even though they may not have a health-related mandate, that the decisions they make may have a certain impact on community members’ health and to ensure that we use a common vocabulary in our discussions. The second objective is to recognize successful efforts already being undertaken in the communities of Nunavik. Finally, the last objective is to make citizens aware that they have the power to change things, small as it may seem at first glance.