Abstract:

Background:
The Health promotion (HP) concept, established in the Ottawa Charter by the World Health Organisation (WHO), has evolved over 35 years. Since 1986 for many public health researchers and educators HP has been a professional cause and a personal philosophy. Nowadays, the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that HP is a major part of the strategic blueprint of the healthcare sector to manage the current crisis. The defined key actions of HP: prevention, the non-pharmaceutical behavioural change, health education, empowerment of the communities and social change appeared to be the crucial measures to build resilience and readiness for the future. However, bio-medicalisation of public health led to a chronic neglect of HP as a discipline in the medical curriculum.
The idea of this paper has been empowered by the 10th WHO Global Conference on HP, which provoked to rethink the narratives around health and the medical education. The medical curriculum should follow the whole-education approaches to health particularly in the context of the COVID-19 syndemy that threatens the well-being of our communities.
The aim of this review is to present HP as an academic discipline and to underline the reviving potential of HP to build resilience in times of COVID-19 crisis.

Methods:
Qualitative content analysis is applied in PubMed databases with keywords - health promotion, education, COVID-19 (in PubMed - 64 results, period 2020- Jan.2022). Regarding the concept, definitions and scope of HP, a purposeful content analysis is conducted of policy documents by the WHO. Participatory action approach is applied in the realm of higher medical education.

HP core competencies and skills to build resilience and to thrive in critical times:
HP is among the essential public health functions. HP is a realm of health enhancing activities which differ in focus from currently dominant curative, high technology or acute health services. HP is complementary but necessary part of the societal efforts to manage the health threats associated with pathogens, lifestyle, and socioeconomic factors. Therefore, training medical students and healthcare personnel to be knowledgeable and competent in the tools of HP is a timely endeavour.

HP as an academic discipline and research field:
HP is not a new and necessary separate discipline. HP as a philosophy allows to educate using the health argument. The paper reviews best HP research and training practices at COVID-19 context. The lessons learned go into three HP directions: health is a part of a larger eco-system; at the core of the sustainable development is primary healthcare; integrative healthcare approaches can contribute to the well-being of the societies. All of these aspects deserve attention in the modern medical curriculum.

Conclusion:
No public health professional or educator could have foreseen the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has caused widespread devastation. On the other hand, COVID-19 has been an opportunity to re-invent our human nature and to restructure our priorities. People need more balanced and empathic life. Societies need to strengthen community resilience and solidarity. This can be done through the HP interventions. The moral obligation of the medical educators is to train about and through health promotion the future professionals. Ultimately, health and education are always together, just like the collaborating support by EDUCO and Medecins sans Frontieres in all the IATED conferences.

Keywords:

Health promotion, resilience, medical education, COVID-19 crisis, sustainable development, well-being, health and humanity.