On 24 Aug 2000, at 22:46, Genevieve Jones wrote:

> The feeling seems to be that Health Promotion is quite passe, and that
> one must become a specialist in Public Health in order to remain
> competitive. That said, "health promotion" as I would define it
> (determinants of health, Ottawa Charter, etc) is being practiced by
> both Health Promotion Specialists and Public Health Specialists.

Genevieve, I respond from a different angle. Given the current policy
development within WHO and subsequently national governmental
agencies, I agree that health promotion has become a "no-no" for
whatever reasons.

Well, one of the key reasons is probably the way health promotion was
presented during the Jakarta Conference in 1997, when the unfortunate
development of "partnerships in health" occured. That has been a
standing invitation for the corporate sector to take over health
promotion as we've known it from Ottawa.

"Partnerships in health" is one of WHO's major strategic approaches to
improve living and working conditions of peoples worldwide. In the April
and May edition of the WHO Bulletin [ http://www.who.int/bulletin/ ], a
two part article on this issue has been published by Kent Buse (Yale
University) & Gill Walt (London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine), which is available online as PDF-files at:

Part I at:
http://www.who.int/bulletin/pdf/2000/issue4/bu0240.pdf

Part II at:
http://www.who.int/bulletin/pdf/2000/issue5/bu0241.pdf

The authors use diplomatic language to present some of their critical
remarks. Unfortunately, they do not take an in-depth look into health
partnerships, but only into those aiming at the prevention of diseases
like malaria etc. But that doesn't make their analysis less relevant. If
you can read between the lines, there's a lot to read here.

Health promotion (probably as much as public health some time later)
has been sold out for extra-budgetary funds of WHO. The strategic
"mistake" was that the privatization of public services always means
the reduction and re-interpretation of those services in terms of
monetary profits.

The Jakarta Conference offered the opportunity to global corporations
to take over the agenda - and you bet that they didn't reject the
invitation.

It'll take years, perhaps one or two decades before we get back to
where we were in 1986.


Eberhard Wenzel MA PhD
Griffith University
Deputy Head, School of Public Health
Meadowbrook, Qld. 4131
Australia
Tel.:  +61-7-3382 1026
Fax:  +61-7-3382 1034
International Public HealthWatch at:
    http://www.ldb.org/iphw/index.htm
WWW Virtual Library Public Health at:
    http://www.ldb.org/vl/index.htm
WWW Virtual Library Circumpolar Peoples
    http://www.ldb.org/vl/cp/index.htm

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone.
Carlyle (1795-1881)