Toward a model of psychological health empowerment: implications for health care in multicultural communities

Abstract

This article presents a model of health empowerment from an individual psychological perspective. Building on Menon's (2001) model of psychological empowerment in organizations, psychological health empowerment is developed as a construct to capture the individual community member's feelings of empowerment with regard to health and health care. The context for health empowerment is first conceptualized as an interactive system of three elements, namely, the individual community member, health service providers, and the regulatory environment consisting of health policy and systems. The individual manages his or her own health on a daily basis, interacts with health service providers when in need of specialized medical assistance, and is affected by the ‘health policy and systems’ element. Perceived control, perceived competence, and goal internalization, the three facets of Menon's empowerment model, are then adapted to the health context. A scale for measuring psychological health empowerment is also proposed. The implications of this approach for health care in multicultural communities are then explored.