Time to regenerate: ecosystems and health promotion

Abstract

The concept of health promotion gradually emerged from the discipline of public health during the 1970s. In the mid-19th century, founders of the growing discipline of public health had stressed the importance of social, political, and environmental factors as key determinants of disease and health. However, as microbiology and epidemiology developed, and as the most egregious examples of environmental and social abuse faded from view in developed countries, emphasis on these factors waned within mainstream public health, which remained best established in industrialised countries.