International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) Conference: Promoting policies for health, well-being and equity

The theme for the 24th IUHPE world conference in 2022 is Promoting policies for health, well-being and equity. Such a focus, of course, is integral to the body of knowledge and action that the international health promotion community lives by. As some thinkers have observed, however, the best health advocates may not just be the health promoters or those making government decisions regarding health – health is created, sustained and changed in board rooms, parliamentary corridors, think tanks and neighbourhood gardens.

For the health promotion community now more than ever it is time to reach out to the policy world, not just in rhetoric, but in true understanding. We need to elevate our interventions, our scholarship, and our reflections to new levels. We need to move beyond words and pro-actively engage with policy-making for the promotion of health – embracing equity and well-being. Traditionally, the health promotion community has addressed policy in forms such as Healthy Public Policy, and more recently, Health in All Policy. Collective choice to address important issues in society (the crux of policy) is an integral concern of health promotion. The complexities and scales of joined-up health policies are vast. They reach from prevention of destructive immune responses in an individual’s physiology to our ecosystems and the Anthropocene.

Health promotion is, of course, also a profound concern for policy-makers. Un-healthy individuals and populations, and communities affected by deep social and health inequity, drive many policy agendas. How these agendas are shaped and sustained at every level, publicly and privately, in board rooms and at kitchen tables, is an important question. Who benefits, how and when, from these policies?

IUHPE 2022 invites anyone on the spectrum of the (health) policy process to join us. Practitioner as well as academic health promoters create, and are influenced by, policy.  Agenda-setters like communities and social movements, agenda-shapers like media and policy advisers, policy adopters in local governments or global institutions, and policy implementers in community roles: IUHPE 2022 is your conference.

Register Here