Health Promotion Ontario

Hello, this is just a quick update to HPO members regarding our successful conference that was held earlier this week in Toronto. It was great to meet so many members, both new and familiar faces!

About 50 HPO members and other guests including representatives from public health departments from Nova Scotia and Manitoba (sponsored by the Public Health Agency of Canada) gathered for the event, which was titled Poverty, Politics and Public Health.

The agenda was packed with sessions and speakers based around health promotion and the role of health promoters in developing health public policy.

Please see the 2008 conference section for details.

Click Here for presentations.

Health Promotion Ontario (HPO) has been one of many stakeholder organizations involved in the consultation and development process for the Ontario Public Health Program Standards, which will establish the new scope of service and accountability framework for Ontario’s public health units. Pending final government approval, it is anticipated that these new standards and the accompanying protocols and performance management framework will be released in summer 2008, with training in the fall of 2008, for implementation in 2009.

The Public Health Standards Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care has been leading the consultation process, which most recently has included the development of protocols to support the standards. Protocol Development Teams have been drafting detailed supporting documents throughout the fall of 2007. The next step in the process will be consultation on the draft protocols, which will happen in two phases, the first of which has been scheduled to take place between January 28 and February 15, 2008. HPO has been invited to participate in this consultation process, and we will be seeking input from our membership through the consultation period.

The HPO Executive feels that the proposed standards represent a significant advance over the current document, and we are pleased to see that comprehensive health promotion strategies are called for across all of the standards. We feel strongly that within a multi-disciplinary public health workforce, Ontario's health promoters are well positioned to act as "integrators" and provide strong linkages between epidemiology, program planning, evaluation and implementation, particularly in the domains of policy development, creating supportive environments and community capacity building and engagement. Up to date information regarding the Ontario Public Health Standards, including the Draft Standards, can be accessed on the Ontario Public Health Portal, www.publichealthontario.ca

The 2007-2008 membership drive is on! Click here for current membership forms and related documents.

On behalf of the HPO Executive committee, this is an update to inform you that HPO submitted a response to the new program standards. We received feedback from many of you, and your comments and feedback were incorporated into our submission. Click here to view our submission (large.pdf file).

Thanks very much to all who contributed to our response. To summarize, HPO is largely in favour of the standards as written, and offered suggestions where we had specific comments to make. The HPO Executive feels that the proposed standards represent a significant advance over the current document, and we are pleased to see that comprehensive health promotion strategies are called for across all of the standards. We feel strongly that within a multi-disciplinary public health workforce, Ontario's health promotion practitioners are well positioned to act as "integrators" and provide a strong link between epidemiology and program planning and implementation, particularly in the areas of policy development, creating supportive environments and community capacity building and engagement.

Kevin Churchill, on behalf of the HPO Executive Committee