Bonjour listes!

The posting last week by Bo Haglund of basic info. on the 4th international
conference on health promotion in Djakarta has generated a lot of
electronic exchanges on the 2 listservs to which I post this message. A lot
of the reactions were of the angry or cynical type about the opportunity
missed by WHO to use the electronic venue to generate input from additional
people than the invited "happy few" who will attend the conference in
Indonesia next July. I have two comments and one suggestion to make in
relation to the flury of postings.

My first comment is about WHO. I can also be VERY cynical about WHO: I
spent a full sabbatical year at the WHO European office in Copenhagen, I am
in the (sometimes dubious)  position of being co-responsible for a WHO
collaborating Center, etc. I think part of the cynicism towards this type
of organization is explained by misunderstanding of its nature, and
postings by Eberhard Wentzel and others reminded us that UN agencies are
providing services to national governments, trying to do so in an
economical situation which is currently nothing less than dramatic due to
the financial blackmail of the USA. Despite all their problems, I think
that these international governmental agencies are the closest thing we
have to a global government, in the position to try to somewhat influence
the global economy and marketplace of the "new world order". So rather than
ridicule them (which I admit they often seem to deserve), I think we should
try to find out how to use them or help them out. The posting from Ron
Labonte a couple of weeks ago about healthy public policy at the global
level is in my mind the appropriate attitude and course of action to
undertake.

My second comment is about Djakarta and the use of electronic means either
to provide input to the conference or to disseminate its works. To echo one
of Sam Lafanco's posting, I think that WHO as an organisation has not at
all made use of the real electronic potentialities for Djakarta, for a mix
of three reasons: slowness of organisations and professionals to understand
and learn how to utilize these means; necessity to have national
governments as their primary interface; and, especially, dramatic lack of
staff time to do all that there is to be done. The process leading to
Djakarta, as I understand it from the papers I have received last week (I
am on their mailing list for whatever reason) has involved at least 11
preparatory conferences (6 more are planned) all over the world; it is even
question in these papers of the "Communications and new information
technology as an important challenge for the future of health promotion"
and of "a conference WWW homepage, an internet debate, a web-site at the
conference in Djakarta, a Cyber-Café, etc." However, I checked out the web
site where all the info on the conference is supposed to be posted as they
advertize it <http://www.ki.se/phs/wccse/events/ichp4.htm> and the answer
was, not very astonishingly: site not found.....

Here is my suggestion: from the postings in the 2 listservs over the last
few days, it seems that there is for many (not for all...) an interest to
participate electronically. We even had one firm offer from Alyson Taub
from New-York University <[log in to unmask]>:

****Our New York University website, Health Education Professional Resources
(HEPR), may be of interest.  We would be pleased to include info about the
Jakarta Conference if details were submitted to us.  The URL for HEPR is:

http://www.nyu.edu/education/health/healthed/taub/hepr/noframes/index.html ****

and two less clear but potential offers, one explicit from Steve Jones
<[log in to unmask]>

****I would suggest that a WWW site is established for hosting
information pertinent to the Java conference discussion,
to act as a focus for the discussions leading up to and
after the conference. Is this of interest? *****

and one implicit from Bo Haglund <[log in to unmask]>, on whose server
the official web info on Djakarta is announced to be in WHO documents
<http://www.ki.se/phs/wccse/events/ichp4.htm> and who started the Health
promotion listserv as one of his contributions as a WHO Collabortaing
Center.

I would suggest that all background material that could be of interest be
put on a diskette by WHO (I think this is a more effective mean than trying
to work out the sending of it as a series of attached files) and courriered
to Alyson Taub in the USA and/or Steve Jones in UK and/or to Bo Haglund in
Sweden, any new material coming out afterwards being automatically
forwarded to them. Their task would be to organize the material, to convert
it in HTML, to post it as a web page on their web site, to publicize that
it is there at least on the CLICK4HP and HEALTH PROMOTION RESEARCH
listservs (these 2 lists reach a total of about 700 people worldwide who
would probably be the ones interested in providing input and following the
outcomes of Djakarta), and to invite suggestions and debates that would
then be conducted on one or the other listserv with cross-postings to the
other. And then let us trust the process, that will be unpredictible, a
little wild and most likely useful, fascinating and fun as a lot of what is
going on the internet is ! At the minimum, the set of exchanges could be
saved and sent as additional input to the conference; if there is suffient
time and energy, somebody could make an analysis of the postings,
facilitate the debates, create a sub-discussion group if there is too much
trafic, etc. I think this is simple and feasible. Otherwise, if we wait an
official electronic move from WHO, I doubt it will occur in time: for
instance, the documents that would have been useful for the world health
day on healthy cities in 1996 were not posted on WHO's web site until a few
days from the event, which made them useless for organizing any kind of
activity in time ...

Sorry for this too long posting, but I think we have an interesting
opportunity here.

PS: even if invited (which I have not been) I will not go to Djakarta. I
had the chance to attend one of these conferences (Sundsvall) and others
should get the priviledge of hard long working days (these are WORKING
conferences...).


Une tres bonne journee.

Michel O'Neill, Ph.D.

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Codirecteur, Centre quebecois collaborateur de l'OMS pour le developpement
de villes et villages en sante / Quebec WHO Collaborating Center for the
development of healthy cities and towns,
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