Nora J. Pender's Health Promotion Model in nursing practice

Pender

The Founder of the Health Promotion Model: Nora J. Pender

A brief overview of the biography and philosophy of the founder of the Health Promotion Model (HPM) and a discussion of the theoretical assumptions and implications of the HPM.

background and educational history of Nola J. Pender

Early on in her nursing career, Nola J. Pender grew convinced of the fact that the philosophy of health care in America was fundamentally misaligned. "It became apparent to me that health professionals intervened only after people developed acute or chronic disease and experienced compromised lives. Attention was devoted to treating them [patients] after the fact. This reactive approach did not reflect the philosophical beliefs of our predecessors in nursing that focused on maintaining conditions of healthy interaction between self and the environment. "(Pender, 2003, Most Frequently Asked Questions About the Health Promotion Model and My Professional Work and Career) Pender created her Health Promotion Model (HPM) for nurses in response to the negative tendency of the American medical establishment to see health care merely as the treatment of illness, rather than the prevention of sickness and the maintenance of health.

Today, Nora J. Pender is a Professor Emerita of the School of Michigan Nursing Faculty. A Midwesterner by birth, Pender obtained her BS from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan in 1962 and received her MA from the same institution two years later. She obtained her PhD from Northwestern University of Evanston, Illinois in 1969. She also holds a holds an honorary doctoral degree from Widener University, which was bestowed upon Pender in grateful regard for her contributions to nursing research and health promotion ("Nola J. Pender," 2006, the University of Michigan School of Nursing) Pender also served as the Associate Dean for Research at the University of Michigan School of Nursing from 1990 to 2001. Because of Pender's focus on facilitation of external funding of faculty research, the school attained the highest level of external research funding in its history under her leadership. She also was influential encouraging new interdisciplinary research efforts and developing research centers at Michigan. Dr. Pender served as president of the American Academy of Nursing 1998, and was appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a committee focusing on ways to generate new national strategies of health promotion for America citizens. Today, as America becomes increasingly concerned about the epidemic of obesity amongst schoolchildren today, Nola J. Pender's current research is seen as particularly relevant. She is currently examining ways to increase physical activity in adolescent girls, who often show a particularly precipitous decline in activity, as they grow older. (Pender, 2003, "Biographical Sketch") Thus Pender's early nursing concerns, reflected in her HPM, have become more and more relevant to such contemporary health concerns.

Application of the theory to nursing practice, education and research

It is not very hard to anticipate the use of this model in nursing practice. Imagine a woman coming to a clinic for advice from a nurse practitioner. The woman is overweight and having difficulty coping with her child's health problems. The child is also overweight and has been recently diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. The mother says she cannot do anything to improve her health, everyone in her family is big, and she works late and can't exercise. Plus, much of family togetherness revolves around consuming the high-fat, high-sugar foods