Nola Pender

Nola J. Pender (born August 16, 1941) is a nursing theorist, author, and academic. She is a professor emerita of nursing at the University of Michigan. She created the Health Promotion Model. She has been designated a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing.

During her doctoral studies, Pender became interested in health promotion. She said that she was influenced by a doctoral advisor named James Hall, who studied how people's thoughts shape their motivations and behaviors. In 1982, Pender published her Health Promotion Model. She has also written a textbook, Health Promotion in Nursing Practice; several editions of the book have been published. Her publications include eight textbooks and 50 scholarly writings. Pender was president of the academy from 1991 to 1993. The purpose of the model is to assist nurses in understanding factors that affect health-promoting behaviors. The model provides eight components for the nurse to evaluate.

The health promotion model is based on eight key components of nursing: person environment health illnesses individual characteristics and experiences behavior-specific cognitions and affect behavioral outcome.

Pender's health promotion model manual (2011) outlines the theory's major components as follows: