Elderly, Health Promotion, Empowerment.

In 1986, the Ottawa Charter identified community empowerment as being a central theme of health promotion discourse. Community empowerment became a topical issue in health promotion literature. Examining two cases in the Home for the Elderly in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, study identifies actors, institutions and processes that provided health promotion for the elderly. The article deals with a range of opportunities and possibilities for optimizing care for elderly, both individual and group, through promoting their empowerment. Collaborative partnerships in community networks as well as in intergenerational interaction, these models demonstrate how care-givers, including the Home for the Elderly staff and university, are also empowered in these processes. These discussions reflecting empirical reality and conceptual insights provide the basis of health promotion policies. In addition, this article concludes with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities of facilitating empowerment for health and development.