This document provides information to help you work out if your organisation is a health promotion charity. It:
Characteristics of a health promotion charity
A health promotion charity is a charitable institution whose principal activity is promoting the prevention or control of diseases in human beings.
The characteristics of a health promotion charity are:
- its principal activity is promoting the prevention or control of diseases in human beings, and
- it is a charity which is a charitable institution.
Principal activity of promoting the prevention or control of diseases in human beings
Principal activity
If an organisation has more than one activity, the activities of prevention or controlling diseases in human beings must outweigh its other activities. For example, if only 40% of an organisation's activities are preventing or controlling the diseases, it would not qualify as a health promotion charity.
Diseases
The diseases in human beings are:
'any physical or mental ailment, disorder, defect or morbid condition whether of sudden onset or gradual development and whether of genetic or other origin'
Examples of diseases include asthma, cancer, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), arthritis, heart conditions, brain conditions, paraplegia and kidney conditions.
Examples of control or prevention include:
- providing various forms of relief to individuals suffering from a particular disease and their carers, including but not limited to any activity which enhances the support and quality of life for people with the symptoms of the disease and their carers
- providing broad based education to individuals suffering from a disease
- providing broad based education to carers and service providers including health care workers and other organisations to enable them to appropriately support individuals suffering from a disease
- engaging in medical research into the causes, prevention and treatment of a disease, and
- engaging in activities to raise community awareness of a disease and other similar diseases.
Charitable institution
The characteristics of a charity are:
- it is an entity
- it exists for the public benefit or the relief of poverty
- its purposes are charitable within the legal sense of that term
- it is non-profit, and
- its sole purpose is charitable.
To be a health promotion charity, the charity must be a charitable institution and not a mere fund. An entity will not be an institution if it is a trust that merely manages trust property, and/or holds trust property to make distributions to other entities.
Last Modified: Monday, 7 April 2008