The following message was received by CLICK4HP  administrators from Glenn
Laverack and Ron Labonte regarding the upcoming global health promotion
conference in Bangkok.  As CLICK4HP list does not allow any attachments
(to ensure protection from viruses, and unexpected large documents), the
open letter has been copied and pasted into this message below the
signature.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
From:    "Glenn Laverack" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Sun, June 12, 2005 4:01 pm

 Dr. Ron Labonte, myself and others have concerns about the purpose and
usefulness of the forthcoming 6th Global conference on health promotion
in Bangkok.

Ron and myself have sent an Open letter to Dr. Lee Jong-Wook (DG, WHO)
raising these issues and inviting a response. We also include an addendum
to health promoters encouraging them to use their own professional
influence to challenge WHO on these issues.

Open Letter to the DG follows

Best regards. Glenn Laverack.
Director of Health Promotion
The University of Auckland
School of Population Health
Dept Social and Community Health
Private Bag 92019 Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9 303 5932

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Open letter to Dr. Lee Jong-Wook (Director General, WHO).
The World Health Organisation (WHO) will organise the 6th global
conference on health promotion in Bangkok, Thailand from 7-11 August 2005.
This is part of a prolonged process to develop a new charter for health
promotion to be called ‘the Bangkok Charter’. This process is being met
with a mixed reaction from international health promotion practitioners.
Whilst many practitioners recognise that it is time to revise the Ottawa
Charter for Health Promotion to take account of new health and
geographical changes, a purposeful discussion within the global context of
development and poverty alleviation is not being addressed.

To that end, we invite you, and those in the WHO active in proposing and
drafting the Bangkok Charter, to consider and reply to the following
questions:

1. How do you see the Bangkok Charter’s usefulness in terms of direct (or
even indirect) benefits to the people suffering the consequences of
poverty?
2.  What are the opportunity costs to the alleviation of poverty and
health inequalities of the expensive process of creating the Charter?
3. What steps have you taken to ensure that the Charter is meaningful to
practitioners and communities dealing with the worst burdens of disease?
4. How do you anticipate that the Charter will actually influence health
promotion funders?
 5. The action areas of the Charter are worthy, how will you or those
endorsing the Charter ensure that these action areas will be taken
seriously by governments?
6. What resources does WHO have to back up the implementation of the
Charter through inter alia monitoring, evaluation, public dissemination of
actions (or non-actions) of funders, governments and corporate
stakeholders identified in the Charter?

Dr. Glenn Laverack
Director of Health Promotion
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.
Email: [log in to unmask]  Fax: 64 9 303 5932.

Dr. Ronald labonte
Canada Research Chair, Globalization/Health Equity
Institute of Population Health
University of Ottawa
Email: [log in to unmask]

Addendum to Health Promoters
For those health promotion practitioners who share the concerns we have
outlined in our Open Letter, it is now time to use your professional
influence to challenge the WHO on how this process will really make a
contribution to the alleviation of poverty, inequality and misery in
developing and developed countries. This is particularly timely in light
of international action to cancel debt owed by the world’s poorest
countries and on tackling the social determinants of health.




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