PreCardio: een autonomie-ondersteunende context?

Abstract

Health promotion is an important task for health care in the 21st century. However, ethical considerations about the attitude towards participants of health promotion are scarce. This article provides an ethical consideration of an initiative for cardiovascular prevention, PreCardio. The aim was to determine whether the initiative is a threat to individual autonomy. Furthermore, an examination on the conformity with ethical prescriptions was performed. A literature study resulted in an attitude towards participants, based on the selfdetermination theory (SDT). SDT includes practical recommendations for the development of autonomy-supportive health promotion initiatives. Consequently, PreCardio can be considered as an autonomy-supportive context for the participants. Furthermore, the interventions of PreCardio are in line with the ethical prescriptions on screening and prevention found in literature. A more intense communication between ethics and health professionals is needed to develop health promotion initiatives that support the individual autonomy of the participants.