Health Education Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, 243-248,
June 2000
© 2000 Oxford University Press
IUHPE |
The International Union for Health Promotion and Education
International Union for Health Promotion and Education 2 rue Auguste Comte 92170 Vanves, France Tel: (+33) 1 46 45 00 59 Fax: (+33) 1 46 45 00 45 E-mail: iuhpemcl{at}worldnet.fr Website: www.iuhpe.org
At the beginning of the year 2000, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) and Oxford University Press signed a collaboration agreement to work towards a more formal and mutually beneficial exchange. This agreement names Health Education Research as the official research journal of the IUHPE.
From now on, this section of the Journal will be designated for IUHPE information designed to keep you up to date with our activities. In honour of our newly formed collaboration, I decided to take this opportunity to introduce the readers of HER to the IUHPE.
Once upon a time...
A pioneer of anti-TB health education in the post World War I period as a member of the Rockefeller Mission to France, and later Secretary General of the Health Education Commission of France's National Bureau of Hygiene, Mr Lucien Viborel had a hobby...health education! His influence has not been restricted to his own country. Both a United Nations expert and WHO consultant, he was instrumental in promoting the movement which resulted in the founding of the International Union for Health Education of the Public in 1951. At the very beginning of the 1950s he wrote:
...health education has long been underestimated, but it has above all long been vastly misunderstood. This is all the more natural as we lived till recently under the rule of pathology and assistance. Under such conditions, it was difficult to realize the full value of what is above all a science of action—aimed at health and highlighting social questions—at the very spearhead of hygiene and preventive medicine.... Leading international institutions such as the League of Red Cross Societies, the International Union against Tuberculosis, the International Union against Venereal Diseases had already included health education in their programmes, adopting the view that nothing lasting could be achieved without obtaining, after the necessary psychological preparation, the cooperation of the population as the first and sole beneficiary of what is accomplished by health and social services. There was still the need to crystallize this movement and to call upon the moral forces, good will and specialized knowledge in the field of volunteer service and private initiative. All known and even unsuspected resources had to be united within a vast non-governmental organization where different associations, groups and individuals could meet from the world over to exchange ideas, opinions, methods and experiences. ... Other outstanding social and scientific leaders encouraged, understood and supported this initiative. Professor Parisot with Professor Leon Bernard, had in fact, long before in the aftermath of the 1914–18 War and more specifically from 1925 onwards, implicitly defined the role of an International Union in the field of health education and its necessity. Both of these men had been closely associated with the survey undertaken by the Hygiene Committee of the League of Nations on the practical value of health education, considered both from a scientific point of view and with regard to the promotion of public health. Professor Parisot was thus highly qualified to prepare the birth of the International Union, to guide its first steps and become its Honorary President. The Union had further the exceptional good fortune of being able to draw on the rich experience and sound judgement of Professor Clair Turner (United States), a man of rare experience in public health and health education.
The governing idea in planning and launching the International Union was the establishment between all health workers of closer links in the field of health education and the promotion of mutual understanding which would contribute to constant progress. The years that followed fully justified this aim.
Today...
Today, the IUHPE is nearly half a century old, and draws its strength from being a unique worldwide association of individuals and organizations committed to improving the health of the people of the world through education, community action and the development of healthy public policies.
Through periods of major change in the external environment and within the field of health education and health promotion, the organization has proven to be relevant and resilient. It has flourished as the only global, non-governmental organization of practitioners in this field, and cooperates closely with WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, and other major intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to influence and facilitate the development of health promotion strategies and projects.
The organization's major strength lies in the quality of the skills and knowledge of the membership, of the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, and the capabilities of the Headquarters and Regional Offices in securing partnerships and resources to enable the organization to pursue its goals.
The mission of the IUHPE is to promote global health and to contribute to the achievement of equity in health between and within countries of the world.
To carry out its mission, the IUHPE:
- Advocates for actions that promote the health of populations throughout the world.
- Improves and advances the quality and effectiveness of health promotion and health education practice and knowledge.
- Contributes to the development of the capacity in countries worldwide to do health promotion and health education work.
The IUHPE assists its members to promote better health by:
- Providing a range of professional, technical and scientific services to help the performance and development of their work, including the World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education every 3 years.
- Undertaking advocacy to policy makers across the world in support of health promotion and health education. For example, the IUHPE has just published a report for the European Commission which presents The Evidence of Health Promotion Effectiveness, based on extensive research by leading academics, practitioners and members of the political audience.
The IUHPE offers various categories of membership for institutions of national, regional or local scope as well as for individuals. Members of the IUHPE are entitled to register at the World Conference at a substantially reduced fee.
- National Institutional members are organizations of national scope which are responsible for organizing health promotion and health education in their country (e.g. national agencies, authorities, councils, institutes and units).
- Institutional Members are organizations of international, national or local scope, one of whose main purposes is to undertake or promote one or more aspects of health promotion and health education, which focus on specific themes, target groups or settings (e.g. local providers of health education, local institutes for health promotion, faculties or departments of universities, national organizations such as a national heart foundation, a national medical association, a national research council, international aid agencies, etc).
- Individual Members are individuals with a professional or personal interest in health promotion and health education.
- Honorary Members are organizations or individuals giving special support to the IUHPE.
There has been a new addition to the IUHPE membership family that students will appreciate! New members that are students receive 50% off the regular individual membership fee with certification of student status. If you have students in health promotion, health education or any aspect of public health, be sure to tell them about this opportunity and encourage them to become members.
Benefits of membership
Membership of the IUHPE enables members to:
- Become part of a global network of people and organizations with common goals which facilitates the exchange of ideas, information and experiences.
- Influence health promotion internationally by active participation.
- Disseminate achievements and innovations through participation in IUHPE conferences, and via communication in IUHPE print and electronic journals.
- Receive up-to-date and topical information in the quarterly International Journal of the IUHPE Promotion & Education, in Health Education Research, in newsletters from Regional Offices and other documents.
- Receive position papers to help them through ethical and strategic issues in health promotion practice.
- Sponsor with the IUHPE, research and training programmes, and international and regional conferences, seminars and workshops.
- Participate in the open, democratic life of the IUHPE organization where policy is ultimately determined by the General Assembly of all members (whose next meeting will be in Paris on 18 July 2001).
The IUHPE starts the new millennium with a membership drive
Membership development is a high priority for the IUHPE this year and no one is better suited than our current members to help us recruit new members.
From now until June 2001, our present individual members will be rewarded for recruiting new members according to the following plan:
- To receive next year's Individual Membership free, individual members should recruit one national member or two institutional members of local or regional scope or six individual members.
- To receive next year's Individual Membership free plus free registration to the XVII World Conference, individual members should recruit two national members or four institutional members of local or regional scope or 12 individual members.
In order to help our members in this initiative, the IUHPE has prepared a membership kit that contains our general information as well as relevant documentation on our principle activities to enable those interested to gain a better understanding of who we are and what we do. Kits are available at IUHPE headquarters and may be ordered at: iuhpemt{at}worldnet.fr.
We would like to take this opportunity to encourage all readers of Health Education Research who are not yet members of the IUHPE to join our global network.
Like knowledge, the IUHPE progresses by sudden leaps!
Health: Investment for a Just Society
Our triennial World Conferences are an important part of the Union's rich history, and also reflect the progress of health promotion and health education over the past 50 years.
We are currently in the process of preparing the XVIIth World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education to take place in Paris on 15–21 July 2001.
The XVIIth World Conference will provide a unique opportunity to meet with colleagues from all over the world to share knowledge and experiences, and to debate contemporary health issues. It will be particularly special because the IUHPE will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation.
As the first global conference of the 21st century in its field, it is fundamental and necessary for this conference to recognize that `health for all' remains a worthwhile but increasingly challenging goal. `Investment for health' has rapidly become a way of expressing a positive approach to address the private and public policies that influence the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. The conference theme, `Health: Investment for a Just Society', has been selected in order to highlight this approach while simultaneously underlining the need to maintain a strong sense of purpose and values.
Programme of the week
The XVIIth World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education will include traditional foci on practice, policy, research and training, with sensitivity for local and regional variations. These foci issues will be explored in the context of each of the four major themes of the conference: Advocacy, Evidence, Partnership, Ethics.
Advocacy
Advocacy has long been recognized as a key strategy in health promotion. By taking a position on an issue and publicizing that position in order to influence public policies and social behaviour, advocacy campaigns have been used effectively in conjunction with media and direct lobbying to shape public regulations and community practices in areas such as tobacco control, reproductive health and infectious disease control. Advocacy can also politicize health issues in ways that many health professionals, especially when employed by state agencies, find uncomfortable. This is particularly true with regard to health determinants such as income equity, ecosystem health, social welfare infrastructures, and inequities created by economic globalization and expanding world trade. These issues often embody conflicts between the goals of health promotion and the interests of powerful economic and political elites. A commitment to advocacy demands a firm ethical base, strong argument, solid evidence, and a firm professional networking and support system.
Advocacy plenary session
The plenary session will represent all three sides of the advocacy relationship: the advocate, the community constituency and the policy professional. The advocacy conference stream attempts to answer the following questions:
- What are the broader political prerequisites to effective advocacy?
- What are the skills required to be effective advocates?
- What are the lessons that can be learned from stories of health advocacy that have worked well?
- What are the cautions we need to heed from stories of health advocacy that have done more harm than good or failed in its efforts to `win' an issue?
- What are the leading issues that health promoters in their professional work, or through organizations such as the IUHPE, ought to take on board?
Advocacy key note forum and concurrent sessions
The plenary will be followed by a key note forum where advocacy stories will be shared by practitioners from different parts of the globe, working in different contexts. During the session participants will attempt to illuminate the lessons learned from these experiences. Workshops and parallel sessions throughout the Conference programme will also be held to discuss the practice of advocacy, from what makes a good policy brief, to lobbying strategies, to working with the media.
Advocacy workshops
- Using media for advocacy.
- Promoting healthy public policy.
- Advocacy for health promoting health care.
Evidence
For the past decade, the IUHPE has been at the forefront of scientific and technical development to improve the quality of evidence in health promotion and political debate concerning the application of evidence to decision making. Examples include the collection of reviews of effectiveness published by the IUHPE Regional Office for Europe in 1994, and their series of publications on tools and analysis of health promotion effectiveness. More recently, the IUHPE published a two-part document entitled The Evidence of Health Promotion Effectiveness: Shaping Public Health in a New Europe, a collaborative work with the European Commission and the Centers for Disease Control. Furthermore, the IUHPE continues to remain at the forefront of this issue through developing and initiating the second phase of the aforementioned project, Using the Evidence to Move Forward, a country-specific dissemination and seminar program.
Evidence plenary session
The plenary session will explore a wide range of practical issues and questions including the following:
- What are the technical challenges of research design and outcome measurement?
- What are the values implicit in evidence-based decision making?
- What is the political context for the discussion of evidence?
Evidence key note forum and concurrent sessions
The plenary will be followed by a key note forum where participants will explore these issues in greater detail by examining specific case studies, followed by analysis, discussion and feedback. Workshops and parallel sessions throughout the Conference programme will also be held to further examine issues of evidence across the diversity of health promotion practice and policy development.
Evidence workshops
- Modern methods of evaluation.
- Evaluation methods and evidence (the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative research).
- Values, evaluation and evidence.
- Using evidence to influence policy making.
- Critical appraisal of evidence in health promotion.
Ethics
Bioethics cannot merely be reduced to reflection on application of the newest biotechnologies. Bioethics is, in a broader sense, the ethics of all interventions upon the human being, whether in a group setting or as an individual. Health promotion and health education are both undoubtedly types of intervention upon the human being, and not only to the extent of one's biological being, but touching also the most intimate parts of one's personality, one's attitudes, one's way of life, one's desires and wishes, and the representation of one's self to others. Self-governance, charity, social justice and equity: these major principles of bioethics defined in North America in the 1970s clearly apply themselves to the field of health promotion. The main theme of bioethics is the affirmation of human rights, underlining the dignity of the human being, and one's freedom to empower oneself, one's body and one's life. Bioethics asserts the principle of individuality and personal autonomy of those living within democratic societies, and goes against all of the abusive forces.
Ethics plenary session
The plenary session will explore a wide range of questions concerning the modern dilemma that ethics, as a focus of civil debate and democracy, presents to the field of health promotion.
- Under which scheme of humanity, in the name of which values and at what price can these interventions be possible, realized, legitimate and evaluated?
- How does one give the `ordinary citizen' the capacity to participate in a debate not only concerning his/her health and quality of life, but also on their determinants, on the measures taken to protect them and on the local or national policies on health?
- How do we enable people to play an active role in a true `health democracy'?
Ethics key note forum and concurrent sessions
The plenary will be followed by a key note forum where participants will debate the questions that emerge when, for example, individual choice affects the rights of others; cultural self-determination conflicts with gender rights; environmental preservation conflicts with economic growth; and when economic capital is contrasted with social capital. The goal of bioethics is to give people, more and more, the ability to discuss their health and the factors that either constrain or favor it, the choices to make and the decisions to take. Ethics is no longer a reflection on health education, but rather its objective.
Ethics workshops
- Citizenship and ethics.
- Ethnocentricity and health promotion.
- Victim blaming and advocacy.
- Social equity and health promotion.
- Ethic debate as the goal of health education.
Partnership
`Partnership' has been referred to extensively over the past years as an essential element to effective health promotion. The practice of entering into partnership was born out of need to share scarce resources and combine energies to move the health promotion agenda and impact forward. Willingness to devote time and energy to building and maintaining partnerships comes from recognition that as compared to going-it-alone, collaboration can be more effective, have longer lasting impact, be more innovative and be financially less costly. However, partnerships are not necessarily easy to develop and are at times very difficult to maintain. Yet, effective partnerships are crucial to successful health promotion in the 21st century. The partnership track of the Conference will attempt to analyze the enigma of partnership through a sharing of effective experiences, and analyze the elements favoring and impeding the development and maintenance of effective partnerships.
Partnership plenary session
The plenary session will present examples of effective partnership initiatives. A range of practical issues involved in developing and maintaining the partnerships will be illustrated as speakers from a variety of sectors share their experiences.
- Out of what needs and opportunities are partnerships born? How does the genesis of the partnership impact its development and the outcomes?
- Effective partnerships involve energy and effort from all sides, and some propose that these need to be `equal' efforts. Is this a necessary component for success and on what basis do we evaluate the equality of contributions?
- Partnership efforts are often spoiled by competition that arises during the partnership-building process. This competition can be for funds, credibility or recognition. Is this inevitable or can it be avoided? Or can it merely be managed and, if so, how?
- Partnership is not enough, the outcomes of partnership ventures need to be sustained. Does this necessitate sustaining the partnership and, if so, in what form?
Partnership key note forum and concurrent sessions
The plenary will be followed by key note forum where participants will examine a proposed schema for partnership, analyzing it for: relevance with regard to values implicit to the ethics of partnership building; and practical application in the current political, social and economic world climate. Workshops and parallel sessions throughout the Conference programme will also be held to further examine effective partnership initiatives.
Partnership workshops
- Making partnerships work: from idealism to reality.
- Practical applications of partnerships across sectors.
- Wiring up partnerships: applying the evidence base to improve performance.
- Health in Europe Media Initiative: the WHO Health in Europe Broadcast Series.
- Tobacco Free Initiatives: Partnerships for a Tobacco-Free World.
Details
The Second announcement, containing all relevant information and forms to submit an abstract or to register, will be mailed at the beginning of May 2000. The abstract deadline is 1 October 2000. If you wish to be included in the World Conference database for further information, please contact us.
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