Further to the posting from my colleague Dianna Vidovic about RESOURCES
related to IHS, let me tell you a little about the working group.

The Working Group originally met with the idea of putting on a forum as a first step.
The forum was SRO and we turned away over 30 people. The evaluations were
very positive.

At the forum, we asked for ideas regarding future directions in the final minutes of
the plenary as well as written suggestions. We then took these ideas and clustered
them, relating them to Public Education, Networking, Knowledge Development,
Policy Development, Advocacy, etc.

At our last meeting, we prioritized, identified some key themes, and highlighted
three major ideas:
- extending the workshop process to those who missed the first, as well as making
it accessible throughout the province

- developing a background paper (about 50 pages) that would support a short
statement of principles and proposed standards regarding HP and IHS (say 3
pages)

- reflecting on which individuals and organizations might advocate for these
standards, individually, collectively, and in partnership with other key players (eg.
ONA)

Our next meeting is Tuesday, April 15, on the first floor of 277 Victoria Street (public
health, Toronto). The group is open to all; only requirement is a willingness to work
together to advance the role of HP within IHS. At this point, resources available
within the group and outside are unknown, so it is difficult to predict milestone
dates, specific objectives, etc.

AT MINIMUM, if you want to hold a local workshop, or otherwise raise issues and
disseminate resources, we are willing to share what we have produced (per posting
of Diana Vidovic) as well as what we learned from the first forum.

For reasons that good netizens appreciate, we prefer to distribute materials
electronically, and hope to post some of the materials on our website in the near
future.

Looking forward to future dialogue, with a view to posting updates on working group
progress.


Larry Hershfield
Manager, The Health Communication Unit
at the Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto
The Banting Institute, 100 College Street, Room 213
Toronto, ON  M5G 1L5
Ph:  416-978-0585  Fx:  416-971-2443
E-mail:  [log in to unmask]
www.utoronto.ca/chp/hcu