Lian Wu and Karen Hicks at the IUHPE conference in April.
Three of our academic staff recently attended the 23rd Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) conference in Rotorua. The five-day conference, which takes place every three years, brings together those dedicated to health promotion from across the globe.
Unitec was represented by Associate Professor Lian Wu, Senior Lecturer Karen Hicks and Lecturer Emmanuel Badu, who took on a range of roles from delivering presentations to helping with the organisation of the conference programme.
Associate Professor Lian Wu presented a poster on SmokefreeNZ: Designing and Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Mobile Application in Reducing Cigarette consumption.
Lecturer Emmanuel Badu delivered an oral presentation titled Clear the air in Auckland’s open areas: Addressing inequities through ‘Upfront’ enforcement of smokefree laws
Karen Hicks – Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion, assisted with planning the programme, reviewed abstracts, moderated sessions and facilitated a workshop, as well as presenting – it was a busy and valuable conference for her, reflecting her standing in the national and international world of Health Promotion.
Karen’s oral presentations was titled Developing effective practitioners using health promotion and youth worker competency frameworks as indicators of competence and she also facilitated the workshop What should Health Promoters be taught? Mapping the ‘Core Canons’ of a Teaching Curriculum for 21st Century practice.
Karen, along with other Unitec staff also worked with Lian on the SmokefreeNZ poster presentation, which involved research with Unitec smokers.
The session that Karen moderated explored Planning for healthy families, where academics and health professionals discussed topics such as immunisation, drinking in pregnancy and the impact of family size on individual and community development in Rwanda.
Over the five days, other sessions included Vaping up storm, Preventing and managing diabetes, Youth mental wellbeing, Schools as a setting for health promotion, Urban design for healthy cities and many more.
Karen said the conference provided her an opportunity to network with colleagues nationally and internationally while benefiting academically from current research and practice within the discipline of health promotion that was presented.
“The conference in Rotorua was significant for Māori and Indigenous peoples globally as the organisers IUHPE and the Health Promotion Forum of New Zealand imbedded indigeneity throughout the conference, including content, delivery and practice.”
“This year’s conference was also significant due to its theme WAIORA: Promoting Planetary Health and Sustainable Development for All, as promoting planetary health constitutes a major current challenge for health promoters globally” said Karen.
The IUHPE event organisation team said “these meetings every three years define the ‘state of the art’ in health promotion practice, research, and theory. It also represents a unique platform to showcase New Zealand’s innovation and excellence in health promotion to a global audience, along with our country’s natural beauty, culture and hospitality.”
What is IUHPE?
The International Union for Health Promotion and Education is the global professional non-governmental organisation dedicated to health promotion that operates a unique worldwide, independent, global, professional network of people and institutions committed to improving health and wellbeing.