Enhancing the Role of Critical Theory and Indigenous Knowledge in Health Promotion Theory and Practice

picture Oliver Mweemba

VIDEO

Health promotion is a “process of enabling people to increase control over, and improve their health”. This implies that people must be empowered to control the circumstances and contexts that affect their health. This empowerment agenda requires a deep interrogation of the society we live in. People need to confront issues of ideology, power, hegemony, and social justice. They need to reclaim their self-identity and knowledge systems as resources for health. In this lecture, I argue and illustrate that studying and applying critical theory and indigenous knowledge systems are a powerful tool to enhance the empowerment agenda of health promotion.

Speaker Name

Oliver Mweemba

Date

Quarter

Fall

Speaker Bio

Oliver Mweemba is a Lecturer/Researcher in the Department of Health Promotion and Education, at the University of Zambia. He has a PhD in Social Science and Health from Leeds Beckett University, UK and a Masters of Philosophy in Health Promotion from the University of Bergen, Norway. He is a co-PI in the IDRC funded study on Young Marriage and Parenthood in Zambia (YMAPS). He is also a co-Investigator in a US National Institutes of Health funded project examining a dyad approach to combination HIV prevention in pregnancy for Zambia and Malawi.