Three weeks ago, February 27, 2004, the CLICK4HP list readers received a
notice of a feature article in the Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin
(OHPE) about "Learning Health Promotion: Many Journeys, Many Paths", which I
and Kevin Churchill of Health Promotion Ontario (public health) wrote.
This article can be viewed at
<http://www.ohpe.ca/ebulletin/ViewFeatures.cfm?ISSUE_ID=350>,
and the related resources message, with our listings of colleges,
universities and institutes, can be viewed at
<http://www.ohpe.ca/ebulletin/ViewResources.cfm?ISSUE_ID=350> .
We received considerable feedback about this short summary article on how
and where people can learn about health promotion, and thought to share
these views and questions here, and invite further discussion.
Many readers commented on content of the feature article - about what makes
up "health promotion", core competencies and the conceptual approaches of
health promotion, about how we learn and who we learn from, and the career
path related to health promotion. We received:
- comments on core competencies for health promotion as lacking in two key
areas: knowledge of human biosystems and psychology;
- concerns about neglect of other fields that include health promotion such
Occupational Health Nursing;
- issue with our statement that HP is not exclusively a professional
activity, in regards to standards: "wellness people who have no training or
governing body misrepresenting their skills and education with no safeguards
to the public"; and
- supportive comments about the article, with specific interest in our
suggestion of looking into mentor programs and contacts.
A reader asks "Do you happen to have any information about such [mentor]
programs and/or the best means of finding someone who might be able to
provide a little bit of guidance?" Unfortunately, we had no easy answers,
and hope that discussion on this list can offer some additional insights and
suggestions for mentoring programs in health promotion.
In the past 3 weeks since the article and the resources list were published,
there's also been a steady stream of email messages about the resources
listings that we compiled. Our criteria was to find, first, all the specific
health promotion programs at universities and some colleges, then health
promotion related programs such as community health programs/ epidemiology,
public health and health education, that included a health promotion
approach. We quickly realized that we'd left out some very key programs in
our listing, and hastened to add these to the online list. Unfortunately, we
know that there is no way for the OHPE Bulletin to include all the programs
that would be useful for health promoters; OHPE simply doesn't have the
resources to be comprehensive for a field this diverse.
The OHPE Bulletin has featured 'letters to the editor' responding to the
article in two issues, and has included additional programs and courses that
are recommended in these columns. See the first batch from March 5th at
<http://www.ohpe.ca/ebulletin/FullFeature.cfm?ID=351&ROWNUMBER=1>
and in today's feature/column at
<http://www.ohpe.ca/ebulletin/FullFeature.cfm?ID=353&ROWNUMBER=1> .
Over the next week or so, I will post some of the suggested courses,
programs, summer schools and workshop series that have been sent in. All
comments are welcome!
Alison
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Alison Stirling, health promotion consultant
Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse (OPC)
Suite 1900, 180 Dundas St. W. Toronto, ON M5G 1Z8
Tel. 416-408-2249 or 1-800-263-2846 x226
Fax. 416-408-2122 Email: [log in to unmask]
Internet: http://www.opc.on.ca
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