Ecological approaches in health promotion view health as a product of the interdependence between the individual and subsystems of the ecosystem (e.g., family, community, culture, and the physical and social environment). To promote health, an ecosystem must offer economic and social conditions conducive to health and healthful lifestyles. These environments must also provide information and life skills that enable individuals to engage in healthful behaviors. Finally, healthful options among goods and services must be available. In an ecological context, all such elements are viewed as determinants of health. They also provide support in helping individuals modify their behaviors and reduce their exposure to risk factors.

The ecological view of behavior holds that the functioning of an organism is mediated by behavior-environment interactions. This concept of reciprocal determinism suggests that the environment controls or sets limits on behaviors that occur in it, and that changing environmental variables result in the modification of behaviors. The inference is that health promotion can achieve its best results by way of individuals, groups, and organizations exercising control over their environment. The reciprocal side of this equation, however, holds that the behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations also influences their environments. This leads to the credo that health promotion seeks to enable the empowerment of people by allowing them greater control over the determinants of their health, whether these are behavioral or environmental. In taking greater control themselves, rather than depending on health professionals to exercise the control for them, people should be better able to adjust their behavior to changing environmental conditions, or to adjust their environments to changing behaviors.

Reflecting its accent on the multiple interdependencies of the elements making up a social web, an ecological approach suggests the need for interventions directed at several levels within a community and at multiple sectors of a social system (e.g., health, education, welfare, commerce, and transportation). The specification and application of such a sweeping, holistic conceptual framework challenges the capabilities and time of practitioners. The specificity with which ecological guidelines can identify the particular levels and sectors in need of attention is inherently constrained by the infinite variety of interactions that can apply in each idiosyncratic organization, community, or other social system. As the effectiveness of any health promotion strategy depends on its appropriate fit with the people involved, the health issue of concern, and the environment in which it is to be applied, any practical application of the ecological approach must target specific levels and sectors of a complex system. A realistic strategy, therefore, is to intervene where one can, with reasonable certainty, match actions with needs and where one can be accountable for unexpected side effects. Careful, systematic planning and practice are essential.

• Attributes - quantity, size, color, volume, temperature, and mass.
  
• Relationships - are the associations that exist between elements and attributes based on cause and effect. The state or vitality of the system is defined when each of its properties has a defined value and are working together well.
• Stasis: All systems will seek stability, homeostasis and equilibrium. All systems will seek to survive and reproduce themselves.

• A shift in attention from the parts to the whole: The part cannot be understood in isolation from the whole. Essential, systemic properties are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have.
  
• Attention shifts back and forth between systems levels; systems are nested within other systems. Each level represents differing levels of complexity, but similar concepts may be applied to understand different levels. Systems thinking holds that the properties of the parts are not intrinsic to them, but can only be understood in the context of the whole; you will not understand the reactions of doctors unless you study their behaviour in the context of the health care reforms.
  
• Knowledge is a network of ideas; ideas are a network or a juxtaposition of concepts, and so on... In systems thinking, knowledge is no longer seen as a building ("the structure of knowledge"), but as a network. Physics is no longer seen as a fundamental science – it just concerns a different systems level. While Cartesian thinkers held science to be objective, the systems approach holds that epistemology forms an integral part of natural phenomena. All knowledge is approximate, and is viewed from a particular perspective. Science can never provide any complete and definitive understanding.

One key point derived from this emerging understanding about the complex ecologies depicted above is that multiple, coordinated interventions aimed at making the various components of the school-home-neighbourhood ecology healthier and helping them to work together more effectively for the health and social development of their occupants are required. These comprehensive and coordinated models is that their coordinated, multiple interventions are best if they are aimed at influencing a number of factors, behaviours or conditions rather than just one or two targets. The diagram below depicts these different interventions and how they can influence health and social development at multiple levels in multiple systems.