Citation

Kamp A. Pol. Pract. Health Saf. 2009; 7(1): 85-102.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (Great Britain))

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper examines the potential of workplace health promotion to create new approaches to occupational safety and health. In relation to health, workplace health promotion is often regarded as an individualist-based competitor to occupational safety and health. However, the concept of workplace health promotion may be constructed and interpreted along different lines, drawing on different conceptions of health and health promotion. The paper presents a study of how a concept of workplace health promotion that integrates occupational safety and health and lifestyle was developed in the Danish context. This concept represents a hybrid of medical and humanistic understandings of health promotion. It escapes the inherent individualism of health promotion, and displays elements of empowerment, highlighting employee participation. At the same time, it introduces a subjective perspective to occupational safety and health. The concluding discussion considers the possibilities of further developing and institutionalising approaches that integrate collective and subjective approaches to health promotion in the workplace.