PROGRAM

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Conference Themes

The 12th National Health Promotion Conference will encourage the health promotion field to be radically more effective in improving health and well-being, and in reducing inequalities in the 21^st century. It will stimulate this through thinking critically about both our past and our future through a combination of:

imagining likely futures for Australia and its region and about the crucial challenges ahead to improving health, and

sharing and reflecting upon the accumulated wisdom from the last 25 years.
Inequalities in health will be highlighted through the exploration of five themes (described below). Prominence will be given to health promotion research and practice that addresses the fact that the gaps in health inequalities continues to grow despite more than 20 years of health promotion practice. Especially urgent are the growing inequalities among indigenous Australians and our rural communities. What are the key challenges facing us in making the links between the social determinants of health and the social determinants of effective health promotion? How can we re-address the balance between those who continue to thrive and build health and well being and those for whom health is still a dream? How do we turn these dreams to reality in the near future?

PROMOTING WORK AND HEALTH
The focus of this theme is to explore the future nature of work, expected health consequences and impact on everyday life. Inequalities in work are directly related to inequalities in health. Unemployment, underemployment and over-employment are important determinants of inequalities in health. Future organisational forms, types of work processes and employment career relations will be examined in the context of work and health. The effects of both employment and unemployment on both physical and mental health will be explored.

if this is the age of the overworked, underworked and never to work, how do we reduce inequalities and the resultant effects on health?
This theme addresses the individual, organisational, social and environmental issues of work, health inequalities and new approaches to increasing opportunities for health enhancing employment in society.

PROMOTING EFFECTIVE ADVOCACY
Advocacy is widely accepted as a fundamental component of effective health promotion. Yet, operationalizing this concept and putting it into action is a challenge. WHO takes as its starting point a definition that describes advocacy as:

"A combination of individual and social actions designed to gain political commitment policy support, social acceptance and systems support for a particular issue" (WHO Geneva, 1998)

This theme addresses all aspects of advocacy in the promotion of health in its broader sense. It will examine individual, systems and structural-political advocacy with a focus on activities relevant to inequalities in health at the individual, community and global level. It explores the following questions:

"advocacy" is often used to describe many health promotion activities, do we have a shared understanding of its meaning?

how able is health promotion to move away from "healthism" in recognising grass roots advocacy?

how is advocacy best translated into policy?

PROMOTING PRIMARY HEALTH CARE TO REDUCE HEALTH INEQUALITIES
The responsibility for health promotion in primary care is to shift the focus on disease to a focus on health, and reorient the system to apportion investments to treatment and prevention. The ongoing challenge for primary care has been to move beyond the provision of clinical and curative services to embrace a social view of health. This is based on the premise that the greatest influences of health are life circumstances including people's social, environmental and economic conditions. Poor living conditions lead to poor health-which is largely the experience of disadvantaged groups.

More than twenty years has gone by since the Declaration of Alma Ata first described the notion of primary health care. The key questions within this theme are:

have disadvantaged group's rights to health pro-motion been addressed within primary care set-tings?

does primary care respond to inequalities in health? Has primary care been in the spirit of Alma Ata? If so, how?

have health services (aged care, community health, drug treatment, dental, mental health, general practice) been successfully 'reoriented' as in the Ottawa Charter? Do we have better balance between acute care and the promotion of health? If so, why? How?

INTERSECTORAL COLLABORATION FOR HEALTH EQUITY
This theme explores examples of partnerships, alliances or collaboration between health and other public and private sectors that have been effective (or have not!) in reducing inequalities.

does intersectoral collaboration contribute to decreasing the gaps in health inequalities or does it contribute to these gaps?

is there an explicit goal of reducing inequalities within current partnership approaches? We want to raise the awareness of the wider community and human services sector in the social determinants of health and to explore how collaborative approaches have contributed to a more integrated approach to the health and well being of disadvantaged and at risk groups.

GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS AND INEQUALITIES IN HEALTH
What are the major challenges facing global inequalities and the promotion of health among the world's diverse communities and populations? How has health promotion faced the challenges of:

population movements;

refugee resettlement;

internal conflict and civil strife;

emerging infectious disease epidemics;

global climate change;

the impact on environmental degradation and the need to make a livelihood amongst indigenous communities;

exploitation of labor markets and the impact of an increasingly global media on local identities and ways of life;

the impacts of rapidly changing biotechnology on health outcomes including genetic engineering and biodiversity of the food chain?

This theme takes a critical look at health promotion's conceptual and practical capacity to address these broader global concerns.

to what extent has health promotion been effective in weaving the micro contexts and practices with the massive and rapid global challenges faced by the majority of the world's populations?

what are the practical examples of how health promotion frameworks have been able to effectively address the health inequalities often produced by the above global changes and how must health promotion change to address these emerging challenges in the future?

Keynote Speakers

SIR DONALD ACHESON, KBE, M.D.
Sir Donald Acheson was born in Belfast in 1926 and trained as a physician at University of Oxford and Middlesex Hospital, London. His life-time commitment to medicine and health has been prolific, holding many esteemed positions including President, British Medical Association; Chief Medical Officer of England; Chief Medical Officer to Her Majesty's Government; Member of WHO Executive Board; Member (Past President) of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe; Chairman of the Technical Discussions of the World Health Assembly on Rapid Urbanisation and Health 1990; and Special Representative for Humanitarian Relief WHO, Former Yugoslavia 1992 - 93, and in Chechnya Region, Russia 1996.

Sir Donald has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Southampton, Belfast, Nottingham, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Birmingham, Salford, Ulster and Keele. He has received numerous medals and citations including the Chadwick Centennial Medal 1990 and the Leon Bernard Foundation Prize in Social Medicine of the World Health Organisation, 1994.

He is currently the Chair, International Centre for Health and Society, University College, London. He recently chaired the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health, England that reviewed and summarised inequalities in health in England and identified priority areas for action.

DR PAMELA HARTIGAN
Dr Pamela Hartigan, is currently WHO's Director of Health Promotion. She is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, holds a Masters in Economics from the Institut d'Etudes Europeenes at the University of Brussels, a Masters in Education from The American University in Washington D.C. and a Ph.D. in Behavioural Psychology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Dr Hartigan began her career as an economist at the World Bank and subsequently worked in education and curriculum development with a focus on the needs of the immigrant community in Washington, D.C. in 1988, Dr Hartigan joined WHO, working at the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), regional office of WHO in the Americas, in the area of HIV/AIDS.

In 1997, Dr Hartigan was selected by the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) of the World Bank, UNDP and WHO as Programme Manager and Manager of the Task Force on Gender-Sensitive Interventions. She also became team leader of TDR's area of Applied Field Research.

REV NICOLAS FRANCES MBE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BROTHERHOOD OF ST LAURENCE
Recognised as a leading entrepreneurial thinker and doer on social welfare issues in the UK. Started the
Furniture Resource Centre (FRC), to train and employ the long-term unemployed. Developed a national scheme, funded by Government, which supplied new quality furniture to individuals and families who were starting up a home. Worked with the British Government to create new ways to deliver welfare services. Used the European Union to facilitate the growth and influence of the non-government sector.

PROFESSOR RICHARD WILKINSON
Richard Wilkinson is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Trafford Centre for Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research at the University of Sussex in England. He is also visiting professor at the International Centre for Health and Society at University College London. After a first degree in Economic History, he trained in Epidemiology and worked for some years in the British National Health Service. Funded mainly by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council in London, he has been engaged in research on health inequalities and the social and economic determinants of health for over 20 years. He has published several recent books on these issues, including Unhealthy Societies: the afflictions of inequality and The Social Determinants of Health with Michael Marmot.

AMBASSADOR SALLY COWAL
Sally Cowal is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Youth For Under-standing (YFU) International Exchange. YFU is one of the largest, oldest and most respected international student exchange programs in the world for youth and currently operates in more than 50 countries with a network of over 2,000 volunteers.

Previously Ms Cowal served as Director, External Relations for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Geneva, where she was responsible for public information, fundraising and advocacy. She has also served as Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago representing the United States' economic, political and security interests; as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, and as a Foreign Service Officer in New Delhi, Bogota, Tel Aviv, Washington and New York.

KATE GILMORE
Kate Gilmore is the National Director of Amnesty International Australia, the Australian section of the world's largest human rights organisation. The Australian Section is the largest of Amnesty International's southern hemi-sphere sections and Kate took up the position of National Director in August, 1996.

In the previous ten years she had worked in two arenas: public hospital administration and violence against women. She established and led a centre for the support of rape victims that has become a model for national service development. She helped to establish the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture. She also was a member of on Australia's National Committee on Violence Against Women. Briefly a part-time commissioner with the Victorian Law Reform Commission, Kate also worked in senior management at the Royal Women's Hospital, Australia's largest obstetric and gynaecology hospital. In each role she was responsible for steering significant organisational change and service development, particularly for women.

Kate has published on issues related to violence against women, sexual assault, cultural diversity and service provision.

ASS/PROF IAN ANDERSON
Associate Professor Ian Anderson is the Director of the VicHealth Koori Health Research and Community Development Unit, Centre for the Study of Health and Society, The University of Melbourne.

He has worked in Aboriginal Health for over 15 years as a health worker, health educator and general practitioner. He was Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, then the Medical Adviser to the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care. He has written widely on issues related to Aboriginal health, identity and culture and has a broad interest in the sociology of health and illness, policy analysis and theory development in the social sciences.

KARLENE DWYER
Karlene Dwyer is currently Chief Executive Officer, Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (VACCHO). She was employed as Administrator of the Njernda Aboriginal Co-Operative in Echuca for five years and has worked in a number of other Aboriginal community organisations, including seven years at the Aborigines Advancement League. Karlene is a Board Member of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service and
a Member of the VACCHO Executive.

PAUL BRIGGS
Paul Briggs has been active in Koori health, sport, education and economic development for many years. He is a founding member of VACCHO and remains closely involved in their policy and program development. He is President of the Rumbalara Football Netball Club in Shepparton, Victoria and President of First Nations, the national Indigenous credit union.

Paul recently worked for the Commonwealth Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. He is involved in a number of consultancies including the Emotional and Spiritual Wellbeing Funding Program which is a component of VicHealth's Mental Health Promotion Plan.

Social Program

WELCOME RECEPTION
Sunday, 29 October
Time: 1700 - 1830
Cost: Inclusive for delegates
Join the local host committee and other delegates at the Conference venue, the Hotel Sofitel for the Welcome Reception. This will be the first opportunity to catch up with colleagues before the start of the Conference.
Bookings: Catering will only be provided for guests who have recorded their intention to attend on the Registration Form.

CONFERENCE DINNER
Tuesday, 31 October
Time: 1930 - 2300
Cost: $65.00
Bookings: Registration Form
Join colleagues in a social environment in the fun part of the meeting. Cost of attending is additional to the registration fee.

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL
19 October to 4 November 2000-04-13
Location: In and around the city of Melbourne
Delegates will have an opportunity to enjoy the Melbourne Festival whilst in Melbourne. The festival is among the world's premier arts festivals, renowned for presenting the cream of Australian and international events encompassing all art forms. This festival is a 17 day cultural feast featuring hundreds of music, opera, dance, theatre and artistic performances in a host of venues, both indoors and on the streets of Melbourne. Please view the Festival website for further information-http://www.melbournefestival.com.au/