Health-Promoting Behavioral Cognitive Perceptual And Somatic Antecedents Among College Students

INTRODUCTION Our Health, Our Future, Our Choice (9th Global Conference on Health Promotion, Shanghai, 2016) Health promotion, maintenance and preservation are the fundamental prerequisites to community development. A healthy society can be created and maintained by the healthy members of the community. Today, when the world is facing multiple health challenges, ranging from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the health impacts of environmental pollution & climate change, and multiple humanitarian crises, role of health promoting behaviors become all the more important. These challenges are putting lives, livelihoods and economies in jeopardy, and reflect a deep concern that we as a society are failing to invest enough resources in core health priorities and systems. None of these issues are simple to address, but they are within reach. The need is to realize that our health and total wellbeing depends upon what we do and do not do for ourselves, than what health professionals can do. The health status of an individual or population depends upon a sustainable balance of the complex responses between physiological, psychological, social and environmental factors. Today, the conception of health in all communities is shifting from disease model to health model which emphasizes health promotion rather than disease prevention. Health promotion may be understood as actions and advocacy to address the full range of potentially modifiable determinants of health, including actions that allow people to adopt and maintain healthy lives and those that create living conditions and environments that support health (WHO, 1998). It is a science aiming to reach optimal health. Health promotion includes all the activities that aim at increasing well-being; prevention and control of disease and health hazards. Health promotion is to add 'life into years' and not just add 'years onto life'. It aims at reorienting health services and changing the focus of curative services to maintenance and promotion of health. It views health more than just absence of disease. Health promotion is an emerging field of action, often referred to as the 'new' public health perspective (Baum, 1998). So, present societies must actively promote a healthy lifestyle,