> On  1 Dec 97 at 11:42, Liz Rykert wrote:

> > If so how do we dismantle this wall of silence? (Note: Liz was
referring to the silence of health promoters in the face of inequalities.)


>  If health promotors are not trained
> to understand the political implications of public health and its programs,
> they will hardly be enabled to form *alliances* amongst themselves (join trade
> unions?).


Sixteen years ago (how time flies when you're having fun!), I was
primarily responsible for designing and directing the first Masters
program in Health Promotion in Canada. I can guarantee you that I used
every reference I could find for the years I directed and taught in the
core program to illustrate the impact of inequities on health status and
the ability to respond to health problems. The program continues to make
sure that students understand this. The program has had, and continues to
have, many faculty who teach and research inequities and are known to
members of this list: Dennis Raphael, Ann Robertson, Ron Labonte, Michael
Goodstadt, Irv Rootman, and Blake Poland, to name a few. The program is
hardly perfect, but no student can leave the program ignorant of these
issues.

In all the years I have been teaching about inequities, I have met very
few students who were actually *hostile* to the material. Most of them,
were at least curious and accepted that they "should" know this. Those who
wanted to "do something" were, and are, taught what we know about that.

I think that health promoters are now in a very good situation. They have
the NUMBERS from which to speak. It should be becoming clearer and clearer
(or is that curiouser and curiouser) that the problems rooted in politics
require political solutions. I hope that we tell our students that first
and foremost they are CITIZENS and have a duty to speak. Some of us have
been very disappointed that some UT students who obtain positions of power
have stopped short of saying and doing the obvious publically. But there
are many others who are slogging away, looking for every opportunity they
can to address the inequities issues. I hope they will find a place on
this list to talk about their experiences in truth telling.

> It seems to be ironic that health-promotion-newspeak applies first
> and foremost to health promotors themselves but is hardly applied here
> as those
> initiating and controlling the discourse seem to believe they're in control
> while they are controlled.

I could be wrong of course, but I don't think many of us here in Canada,
working in health promotion (or even in that old wine in the new
neo-liberal skin called "population health") think we control the
discourse. We know all about Conrad Black and Bay Street and APEC and the
MAI...we know less about what to do. So, we are left teaching students
about the value of labour unions for themselves and others (who are lucky
enough to have a job and one that is, or could be, unionized) of
networking, of social support, of lobbying, of voting, of orgainizing, of
community development, of ........ (fill in the blank with your favorite
political strategies).

> As a friend from Eastern Europe once told me in the
> 1980s: We do not live, we are lived.

Ain't it the truth..but remember Emma Goldman and insist that dancing be
part of the revolution.

Regards,

Rhonda Love, PhD, C.Psych.

Department of Public Health Sciences
Faculty of Medicine
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON
Canada M5S 1A8

416-978-7514
416-978-2087 (fax)
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