The Ottawa Charter defined health promotion as "the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and improve it. To achieve a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and realize their aspirations, meet their needs, modify their surroundings, or cope with them."

The protagonist of health promotion is therefore the person, and not the institutions, which must put the person in a position to be able and able to choose, guaranteeing at the same time conditions of physical, psychological and relational well-being. Health promotion must embrace the needs of each person and seek to eliminate differences and conditions of inequity, which requires a sense of justice, planning and educational action.

The Ottawa Charter is also applicable to the field of procreative and preconception health, the promotion of which can also be achieved through a careful and widespread process of Preconception Health Care Literacy. On the other hand, there are numerous studies that highlight how the lack of knowledge on the part of women and men about healthy lifestyles and risky behaviors are responsible for infertility conditions or can influence the outcome of a pregnancy and the health conditions of the newborn.

This is what emerges, for example, from a survey carried out by our research team on women aged between 18 and 25 in Italy (Zaçe D, LA Gatta E, Orfino A, Viteritti AM, DI Pietro ML. Knowledge, attitudes, and health status of childbearing age young women regarding preconception health - an Italian survey. J Prev Med Hyg. 2022 Jul 31; 63(2): E270-E281. doi: 10.15167/2421-4248/jpmh2022.63.2.2571).

Out of 340 women interviewed, 43.5% did not know the effects of folic acid in preventing neural tube malformations (anencephaly; spina bifida; encephalocele) in the fetus; 40.9% do not know the effects on preconception health of a high BMI (Body Mass Index); 50.9% have no teratogenic action and 67.1% have no endocrine disrupting effect.

But is it enough to inform? Of course not. If the goal is to increase control of one's health, identify and realize one's aspirations, satisfy one's needs, change one's surroundings and cope with them, information alone is not enough. In fact, it is necessary to make use of educational interventions in order to help everyone to acquire awareness of their actions, critical tools, evaluation criteria, motivations and to act by operating a synthesis between freedom and responsibility.

The Centre for Research and Studies on Procreative Health provides useful tools for the training of new generations (Web-series; Podcast) and organizes Conferences, Seminars and Webinars on topics related to its mission.