This week, the Ontario Health Promotion Email (OHPE) Bulletin (http://www.ohpe.ca) features an article from Marco Ghassemi and Kevin Churchill that outlines the recent development of competencies for health promoters as well as the opportunity for those working in health promotion to provide input into these proposed competencies. 

Pan-Canadian Discipline-Specific Competencies for Health Promoters: A Progress Report
See http://www.ohpe.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9849&Itemid=78 
An earlier OHPE article in October 2007 by Brian Hyndman  "Towards the Development of Canadian Health Promotion Competencies: Where we've been, where we are, and where we're going"  covered 'why now' and the benefits of competencies. 
See: http://www.ohpe.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9068&Itemid=78 

Brian also noted that health promotion competencies do not equal accreditation - a view that we at Health Nexus agree with whole-heartedly. But the separation of competencies and accreditation is not shared by the U.S. Society of Public Health Educators (SOPHE), or the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE). In late June, both SOPHE and IUHPE hosted an international conference in Ireland on health promotion competencies, and invited leading authorities in competency-based and accreditation movements in global health promotion, health education, and public health (but NO Canadians) in reaching an accord last week on what should comprise the domains of core competency in health promotion and health education.
According to the press release on the SOPHE website (http://www.sophe.org), "the conference addressed the development and implementation of credentialing systems to strengthen global capacity in health promotion-a critical element in achieving goals for the improvement of global health."

We at Health Nexus (formerly the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse) expressed our concerns to PHAC and the Canadian leaders in IUHPE about how  intertwined  the two concepts of 'competencies' and 'credentialing'  appear to have become. Our perspective is that we:
  *	fully support the development and wide-spread application of  health promotion competencies for hiring, staff supervision and  professional development vis a vis health promotion planning,  interventions and evaluation; and to
 *	strongly oppose any move towards standardization of credentials or a specific set of training as a pre-requirement for the practice of health promotion.

I hope that there will be more response and discussion of the new OHPE article on Health Promoter Competencies that are appropriate to our situation in Canada.

Alison
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Alison Stirling, 
Knowledge Management Developer, 
Health Nexus Santé (formerly OPC) 
180 Dundas Street W., Suite 1900
Toronto, ON M5G 1Z8
Direct: 416-408-6918 or 416-408-2249 x 2227 
Toll-free (in Ontario)  1-800-397-9567 x2227
Email: [log in to unmask]


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