Health Promotion, Wellness and Safety as Critical Tools for Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Every nation's dream is to achieve a sustainable improvement in the quality life of its citizens. This can only be achieved through good governance and planned actions that detail the vision, mission, goals/objectives and strategies to be attained over a given period of time. Health promotion is receiving more attention in the world today due to the associated benefits. This paper focuses on strategies in health promotion and wellness as a tool to sustainable national development. The paper identifies multiple challenges to health promotion which includes scarcity of data, rapid social changes, insufficient legislation, inadequate resources, limited inter-sectoral cooperation, inadequate involvement of the private sectors. Lack of capacity for health promotion practices, poverty and low priority placed on prevention tohealth promotion by decision makers in Nigeria. The paper concluded that strategieslike human resource for health promotion and wellness, creating supportive environments, strengthening community actions, partnership for health promotion and wellness, research on health promotion and wellness, health financing and reorienting health servicesare going to be effective in addressing many of the health related issues in Nigeria.Having identified the challenges and strategies of health promotion, wellness and safety as a tool for sustainable development in Nigeria, it is recommended that there should be collaborative mechanisms that will involve all partners in the development and sustenance of the health sector so that public programs reach intended target populations in remote locations in other to attain sustainable development