Health Promotion Careers: What we do
Meet IUHPE Registered Health Promotion Practitioner Aileen Scott, who is a Senior Health Promotion Officer- HSE Southeast. Here Aileen gives us some insight into her health promotion career and discusses why health promotion plays such an important role in all our lives.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
My background is in nursing and midwifery and my first real work in health promotion, (though I don’t think I was aware of it at the time) was working in Manila city in a community development health project. This work involved training local healthcare workers who in turn were educating local people on basic health issues. It also involved working with other NGOs and liaising with government programmes. I found this work very fulfilling and could see at first hand the benefit that it had on those who I was working with. At its essence it was health promotion work, though we didn’t use the term and at the time in the early 1990s I wasn’t even aware of the Ottawa Charter! However, when I came home to Ireland two years later, I started to hear the term ‘health promotion’ and I began to investigate where I could find out more about health promotion. This led to me completing the higher diploma in health promotion in NUIG in 1998.
Health Promotion Careers: What we do
Meet Tracey Tobin who is a Health Promotion Officer & National Co-ordinator of the Foundation Programme in Sexual Health Promotion. Tracey is also an IUHPE Registered Health Promotion Practitioner.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
I trained as a nurse and I worked predominantly the area of cardiology and intensive care. I became a clinical nurse specialist in cardiac rehabilitation and risk factor modification and this lead me to be working with clients around lifestyle; also sexual health and resuming sexual activity after a cardiac event were something I included in consultations as appropriate. It was through this work that health promotion became of interest to me, as I learnt that working with the client where they were at was more effective than trying to put them were I wanted them to be. I had the opportunity to move into health promotion in 2004 and was fortunate to always have a role in training which I really enjoy.
Health Promotion Careers: What we do
Meabh McGuinness is an IUHPE Registered Health Promotion Practitioner working as an Education Project Manager in the HSE. In this profile piece, Meabh gives us some insight into her career and what drives her passion for health promotion.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion? 
I studied nutrition originally, and that left me thinking about the gap between knowledge and behaviour. So much was known about nutrition but still people found it hard to eat healthily. My first job was in BreastCheck, and I was learning a lot about the reasons people attend and don’t attend for screening, and that made me even more curious about health promotion, so I started a postgraduate diploma in Health Promotion from NUIG in 2002.
What does a typical day look like for you and what are you currently working on?
I’m working on the HSE National Education Programme as a project manager. There is no typical day! My job involves co-ordinating and supporting our work in schools across the country. The Department of Education has just launched a new Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice, this means every school will have a plan for Wellbeing by 2023, this is great news as it means that wellbeing is seen as central to the Department of Education’s mission and goals. It means we will have to change some of our programmes and projects to support this and align with this new policy, so at the moment we are planning for this change.
Health Promotion Careers: What we do
In this month’s career profile meet Katie Mann who is passionate about getting us active. Katie is an Active Transport Practitioner with Cycle Sense which she started with a friend in 2007. The focus is on cycling skills and road safety instruction. 
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
I think I have to attribute my inspiration to my Dad. He was a community guy, loved life and people, having fun and deeply caring for those around him. I too like to work with people and to enable opportunities for fun, health and practical achievements. Cycling is a great medium for this. I believe the environment plays an intrinsic role in human health and well-being and cycling as active transport can contribute to healthy environments. Being active has improved by own well-being and my knowledge of the same inspires me to enable people to take up active transport. I would have to say that the inspiration for my cycle training career came from my children and their friends and seeing their enjoyment of cycling games and structured skills development. I was given the opportunity to run a cycling course in the local community and I was inspired by one of my colleagues to get tutor cycle training which led to the start of a small company delivering cycle training county wide. Training with SHEP (Social Health Education Project) encouraged me to facilitate groups and individuals through awareness of myself, others and group processes.
Health Promotion Careers: What we do
Health Promotion roles are very varied. Meet Ronan Dillon who is self-employed and works as a Health and Wellbeing co-ordinator in Temple Street Children’s Hospital as well as being the Director of Healthy Workforce.
What inspired you towards a career in health promotion?
Health Promotion was not something I had even thought about when I was doing my Leaving Cert. I had always wanted to do something in sport, so I assumed physiotherapy would be my only option. Thankfully a friend told me about Sport Science in DCU. This gave me a much broader view of what kinds of sports-related jobs were available. Through sports science I realised that the increase in non-communicable diseases was a problem. I went on to play rugby in England and France and it was here that I began to explore health promotion as a career.
