The Ottawa Charter defined health promotion as "the process that enables people to increase control over their health and to 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 know how to choose, while at the same time guaranteeing conditions of physical, mental and relational well-being. Health promotion must embrace the needs of each person and seek to eliminate differences and conditions of inequality, which requires a sense of justice, planning and educational action.

What the Ottawa Charter says is also applicable to the field of procreative and preconceptional health, to the promotion of which a careful and widespread process of Preconception Health Care Literacy can also contribute. 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 outcomes 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 the prevention of neural tube malformations (anencephaly; spina bifida; encephalocele) in the fetus; 40.9% do not know the repercussions 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? Certainly not. If the goal to be achieved is to increase the control of one's health, identify and realize one's aspirations, satisfy one's needs, change the surrounding environment and cope with them, information alone is not enough. In fact, educational interventions must be used in order to help everyone to acquire awareness of their own 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 the new generations (Web-series; Podcast) and organizes Conferences, Seminars and Webinars on topics related to its mission.