The 19th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education
Health Promotion Comes of Age: Research, Policy & Practice for the 21st Century
June 10th -15th, 2007 Vancouver, BC
Health promotion has evolved in response to the need to take action on the broad determinants of health. 
In 1986, the Ottawa Charter established the fundamental guiding principles and values of health promotion and described five strategic action areas to address these determinants. Now, twenty-one years later, it is timely to revisit the relevance of these action areas in response to global changes. The next World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), to be held in Vancouver, Canada, will provide an excellent opportunity to commemorate and revisit the Ottawa Charter. The Conference will challenge the health promotion community to reaffirm the commitment to bringing the vision of the Charter to fruition.
The overall mission of the conference is to review and critically reassess health promotion’s progress since the Ottawa Charter and to help set the course for navigating through the new challenges facing health promotion in an increasingly globalized world.
By linking policy, practice and research, Canada 2007 will enhance partnerships and intersectoral collaborations for health promotion. Canada 2007 will truly be an international venture that will take into account the needs and concerns of health promotion at a global level and encourage members to come from all corners of the world to celebrate the renewal of the Ottawa Charter.
Goals for the 19th IUHPE Conference:
- To build upon and develop its own approach to the Melbourne World Conference theme of valuing diversity and reshaping power - by focusing on health inequities and disparities, and on the social, economic and political factors that create these inequities.
- To increase worldwide collaboration and enhance the health promotion and education knowledge necessary to work towards decreasing health inequities for marginalized populations throughout the world.
- To encourage debate and advocate for strategies that take action to develop the assets for health and development approach and make it a top priority for global health research, policy and practice.
- To place strong emphases on policy-relevant research and on bridging the gap between the policy development process and health promotion research.
Reducing Health Inequities
Canada 2007 will build on the Melbourne IUPHE World Conference themes of re-shaping power and valuing diversity by focusing on key health promotion strategies and interventions aimed at acting on the social determinants of health in order to reduce health inequities that affect specific populations disproportionately and systematically. The Conference will provide an opportunity for health promoters to critically reflect on the global efforts aimed at addressing these issues; in particular, it will be a forum to discuss some of the initial work done by the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.
Assets for Health and Development
Canada 2007 will provide a forum to support the shift from an exclusive orientation to disease reduction and a deficit-based orientation to risks and needs, to a more positive focus on the strengths, assets and capacities that lead to better health and social development outcomes. Participants will be encouraged to contribute to building the evidence base and the policy and practice infrastructure for an assets-based approach.
Enabling System Transformations
Canada 2007 will focus on efforts to coordinate and integrate health promotion action strategies as part of a broader attempt to facilitate systemic change of health systems. It will be a forum for debate on the successes and failures of these efforts and will stimulate discussion on the new theoretical and practical resources that are needed for large systemic transformations.
Assessing the Effectiveness of Health Promotion
Canada 2007 will be an opportunity to engage the whole health promotion community with the efforts of those involved in the IUHPE/WHO Global Programme on Health Promotion Effectiveness. This Programme will publish results in time for the Conference and will re-invigorate the ‘evidence debate’ in health promotion by advancing it to consider new approaches and new evidence from across the globe.
The Canada 2007 official website is offered in English, French and Spanish:
- to provide detailed information about all aspects of the conference;
- to be the conduit for submitting presentations to the conference;
- to register to attend;
- to register to exhibit; and,
- to host virtual web-based conferencing before, during and after the Vancouver event.
If you wish to be added to our mailing list to receive Conference updates and newsletters, please complete and submit the online form. We look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!