IUHPE Conferences: Future Directions

[helgaurke]

This stream is initiated by Maggie Davies, IUHPE vice president for conferences.

Summary

In order to maintain a position as a global lead in health promotion expertise and be relevant to the concerns of its excising and potential members, it is suggested that IUHPE continues to review the way it does things on a regular basis. This short paper is intended to inspire a re-examination and discussion of our approach to the Global Conference.

Background

IUHPE has been organising global conference for 20 years. This is certainly an opportunity to celebrate past success and it should mean that we have unrivalled experience in this field. However, we are aware that our current model is not without some difficulties. These include issues of:
• Placing an undue burden on members who host the conference
• Finding members who are able to carry risk and have appropriate experience in organising such large events
• Ensuring quality and managing reputational risks
• Ensuring the content develops the field of health promotion

The overarching aims of the conferences, which differ thematically, are:

• To further the strategic aims of the organisation
• To provide professional development opportunities
• To advance the field by sharing good practice and adding to the scientific evidence base for health promotion
• To provide networking opportunities particularly for those working in isolation or who are new to the field
• To profile health promotion within the host country
• To publicize the work of IUHPE and recruit new members
• To raise funds for IUHPE

While cost of conferences is one issue, a review of conference is not primarily as a way of saving money for the Union. In fact it has potential negative income generations implications. However, one aspect of the global conference is the perennial tension between keeping costs low and having an event that is proportionate with the theme of addressing inequalities, with the need to have a professional high profile event that is attractive to politicians and senior international policy makers. In addition, there are difficulties in balancing the level of the conference fee, with the ability to sponsor delegates from low-income countries.

The question that you are invited to consider is as to whether these aims are best met by the vehicle of the large scale international conference, or if there are modern alternatives to this.

Issues:

1. Climate change is a key issue for health promotion. Is it ethical to continue to organise large conference that have a significant carbon footprint?

2. The conference is a major call on the finances of many of those attending, particularly for those from places where the health promotion needs are highest. Is it ethical to draw significant funding away from the field?

3. Are there new media or technology solutions that would present us with opportunities to do things differently?

4. Could regional meetings replace the global conference?

5. Could meetings around communities of interest replace the global conference?

Reasons to change:

• Demonstrate values by reducing carbon footprint

• Respond to shifting allegiances around health promotion themes and multi-sectoral inputs

• Locate the health promoting philosophy in power structures and changing cultural and social discourse

• Reduce pressure on health promotion budgets

• Reduce the potential financial and reputational risks to the IUHPE

• Allow for more equal participation by low income country representatives

Reasons not to:

• IUHPE relies on the funding from the global conference. No significant change can be made unless this funding model can be changed.

• The staff structure and objectives are predicated on a need to attend conferences and international events.

• Members “like” organising global events in their own country.

• Only interface and highly visible service to IUHPE members (who can afford to attend)

• Technology not advanced enough


Conclusion

I would welcome your discussion and ideas as to appropriate ways for IUHPE to organize its conferences in the future and I look forward to receiving your comments and hearing your views.

Maggie Davies

[Irv Rootman]

I am delighted to see IUHPE raise the issue of the future of the global conference and think that the short paper by Maggie covers both sides of the issue well. It is indeed a very difficult decision given the pros and cons identified. Since this is the case, I think it probably makes sense to not make the decision too hastily, but rather to explore the options suggested as well as perhaps others before doing so. Among the latter are multi-site video-teleconferences, webinars and summer schools/institutes that might use these and other technologies. Such approaches could allow for people who can't afford to attend global or regional conferences to develop their capacities and participate actively in the work of the IUHPE. At the same time, perhaps we should just recognize that not everyone will be able to attend global conferences and continue to use them as vehicles for raising the funds that IUHPE needs in order to operate until someone comes up with a better idea.

[NavidForoutan]

I have very recently joined IUHPE and I am very pleased that this topic of conferences has come up. I am not against having conferences and in fact I do believe that these are a very helpful venue for members to meet and share their knowledge and experiences among other important activities like raising awareness about our work, etc. But I personally think having big and elaborate conferences such as this years in Geneva is very much against some of the core values of health promotion.

I was taught that at the core of health promotion is empowerment, grass roots advocacy and supporting people to gain back control over their health and their life, and I think such extravagant venues and conferences is not particularly empowering for many of our colleagues who might like to attend or be part of these events but obviously can not afford it. Having an international economic summit or or an auto show is in Geneva might make sense but a health promotion conference ...I am not very sure. I do believe that there are large disparities for our colleagues from the developing countries to share their knowledge and experiences with us and make their voices heard on a global stage and you might think that a health promotion conference would be a good venue for that...

And last but not least coming to the issue of carbon footprint and global environmental challenges that we are facing, I think IUHPE should have been one of the first organisations to have a strong policy to reduce its meetings' and conferences' carbon footprint and we all know that the people who are most affected by our excessive consumption and our frequent flights in jumbo jets, leave in some of the most in need countries and most vulnerable eco-systems.

So some of suggestions as a very new member of IUHPE for future would be;
-Holding all global IUHPE conferences in developing countries; this not only gives more opportunity to our colleagues from developing countries to participate but also bring the total cost and carbon footprints of the events down and contributes to local economies of some of the less developed countries.
-Trying to use new technologies like video conferencing for key note speakers (and others) so they don't have to fly to the conference to give their talk. This is being tried in more and more places and in my own university, Institute of Policy Studies has a policy around that and in our last years conference most of the key note speakers gave their talk via video conference rather than flying to New Zealand.
-Maybe reducing the frequency of large international conferences and putting more emphasis on regional conferences.

These were my some of my views as a very new member of IUHPE.

Regards
Navid

[MarkDooris]

Thanks Maggie for initiating this discussion thread - and to Irv and Navid for responding.

Rather than put forward views 'for' or 'against', I wanted to draw attention to a workshop that will be taking place from 11:00-12:30 on Wednesday 14 July 2010 at the World Conference in Geneva - "Can IUHPE become a sustainable organization? Responsibilities, opportunities and challenges."

The rationale for organising the workshop is two-fold: firstly, to take one of the key themes of the conference and reflect on how IUHPE can better 'practise what it preaches' by integrating a commitment to ecological sustainability within its own practices; secondly, to follow-up the resolution on Global Environmental Change passed at the 2007 World Conference, which specifically recommended that IUHPE should examine the ecological footprint from its various activities and consider how its ecological footprint can be reduced and offset.

Whilst the focus of this is broader than IUHPE conferences, conferences evidently constitute a key dimension of IUHPE's organisational practices. The workshop objectives are to:
1. Set out the rationale for IUHPE leading by example to become a sustainable organization (with a particular focus on ecological sustainability - although this is closely related to social and economic sustainability too)
2. Gain insight into how other organizations have effectively greened their policies and practices
3. Identify implications and priorities for action
4. Agree on champions and lines of responsibility and accountability

We'd welcome the participation of anyone interested and motivated to explore these issues further and help to move IUHPE forward on a change pathway.

[Thermewteaw]

ok, i will be there.

gr.
more...

[msparks]

The tension in this debate seems to me to be between the IUHPE becoming a more ecologically responsible global organisation and IUHPE members having the most beneficial conference interaction possible. I don't believe that these are mutually exclusive. If we, as an organisation, begin to more directly explore and experiment with new ways of delivering and attending conferences, we can see what our members want. There are many possibilities available to us. Increasing virtual access to conference activities as was done impressively at the WHO 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion in Nairobi is one way. Connect2change.org was specifically developed for this purpose and is available for IUHPE to use as a platform for virtual conference interaction. Another way is to have coordinated regional conferences around an agreed theme with some pre-recorded addresses by keynotes, more local/regional responses to global questions, and perhaps globally teleconferenced question and answer sessions with keynote/experts. This would require sensitive timing and better use of available technologies but I don't believe this is beyond our capabilities. The issue of the conferences making money for the organisation remains under these models. The IUHPE would need to clearly explore possibilities for generating income from the local/regional conferences. I believe, however, that a globally agreed and coordinated theme delivered through regional conferences would result in more attendance at these regional conferences. This would generate increase conference profits at the regional level. Perhaps a profit-sharing arrangement could be successfully negotiated. These ideas would not prohibit regional conference-holders from making use of the IUHPE's global network to assist with scientific content, presentation methods or abstract review. A final option would be negotiating a joint global conference with WHO. Instead of being out of step time-wise, perhaps we could join forces, continue to explore our respective agendas but share the costs associated with getting the world's health promotion and education people together once every three years. There could be a common venue and the conference could be spread over, say 5 days, giving plenty of time for the business of the IUHPE and that of the WHO. This would not necessarily limit the carbon footprint of our conference but it would halve the footprint for those who traditionally attend both the IUHPE and the WHO conferences. These are just a few ideas for consideration.
Any new model of delivering conferences will require input from a significant number of IUHPE members and stakeholders. The main purpose of any change should be to satisfy the needs of the membership, whether focused on sustainability, conference opportunities, or both. I urge everyone to attend the workshop on the 14th as well. Perhaps we can better explore these ideas there.
Michael Sparks, Vice President for Strategy and Governance.

[Irv Rootman]

I think some of the ideas that have been suggested are great and potentially viable. Did the meeting mentioned by Mark actually occur and was there some discussion of alternatives to the global conference?

Irv

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