Author: Arja Liinamo
The HPP project had the excellent opportunity to paticipate and make a presentation at the 23th IUHPE (International Union for Health Promotion) World Conference themed Waiora: Promoting Planetary Health and Sustainable Development for All, taking place on the 7th–11th April 2019 in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand. The main organizers of the conference were the Health Promotion Forum of New Zealand and the IUHPE with their partners. The aim was to provide an unparalleled opportunity to link and demonstrate the contribution of health promotion to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to acknowledge the way SDGs contribute to improvements in health and wellbeing. The main themes of the conference covered a wide range of Health Promotion issues, such as Cross-sectoral work, Community programs, Salutogenesis, Health Literacy and Technological solutions. Professional Health Promotion competencies and capacity building were extensively on the agenda. Several sessions concentrated on this topic, such as “What should health promoters be taught?”, “IUHPE Health Promotion Accreditation System” and “Capacity Building Of Health Promotion Workforce”.
The conference brought together 1200 participants – researchers, practitioners, teachers, decision-makers etc. from 75 countries. In total, around 12 000 abstracts were sent to the conference and our HPP presentation was one of the few thousands of accepted abstracts. The HPP oral presentation on the study program research and development process between 2016 and 2019 took place during the session Capacity Building of Health Promotion Workforce on the 10th of April. University colleagues from several countries expressed their interest for the work done in HPP project and many future collaboration opportunities arose.
The conference’s wide, future-focused contents, as well as workshops and issues focusing on Health Promotion professional education and pedagogy from the point of view of knowledge base and teaching method, provided valuable insight for the development of health promotion training. The main take-home message of the conference was that Health Promotion should not be ecologically blind. In addition to social determinants of health, we should also focus more on stable ecosystems and sustainable resources as prerequisites of health. It should always be kept in mind that human health is directly dependent on the system of planetary health.
