Mainstreaming Health Promotion: Kiss of Death or New Lease of Life?
Objectives:
- To examine the changing context for the implementation of health promotion in today’s health systems with twin currents that call for a broad approach to social determinants on the one hand and on the other for an accountable, outcome-oriented approach to priority public health concerns.
- To define and examine the understanding and experience of mainstreaming from two practical applications: to noncommunicable diseases and to pandemic preparedness and response.
- To critically discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats from the drive towards mainstreaming health promotion.
- Does the concept of mainstreaming present a threat to the viability of health promotion as an independent discipline in today’s global health? Does the imperative to deliver defined, attributable public health outcomes present a danger to the integrity of health promotion?
- Is “mainstreaming” an opportunity for health promotion to inject core principles of intersectoral action, community empowerment, salutogenesis and equity considerations, into otherwise medically focused, vertical approaches to public health concerns?
- In recent times, the global efforts to define and shape health promotion are growing stronger (e.g. production of the IUHPE Priorities document and the Nairobi Call to Action for Closing the Implementation Gap in Health Promotion).
- At the same time, the ‘dispersal’ of core concepts of health promotion in seemingly separate movements (for equity, under social determinants; for sustainable development, under environmental programmes; and for ‘hard’ public health improvement, under vertical packages of health and development) shows health promotion’s identity as a coherent discipline.
- What lessons can be learned from concrete experiences of mainstreaming?
The session considers the identity of health promotion and its role in the current public health environment which focuses on the one hand on upstream approaches (equity, development issues) and on the other hand on the delivery of packages of intervention addressing priority public health concerns (e.g. pandemics or noncommunicable diseases).
Proposed format: Symposium:
- Brief context introduction (and conclusion) by WHO.
- Brief opening statements by panelists.
- Moderated discussion between panelists.
- Moderated discussion between panelists and participants in sub-plenary.
- Gauden Galea, Coordinator Health Promotion, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland
- Prof David McQueen, President International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), Atlanta, USA
- Dr. Mary Amuyunzu-Nyamongo, Executive Director, African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD), Nairobi, Kenya
- Dr. Mihaly Kökeny, Former Minister of Health, Hungary
