Promoting health and development: closing the implementation gap
7th Global Conference on Health Promotion organized by WHO and Kenya Ministry of Public Health will be held in Nairobi, 26-30 October 2009. It is the latest in the series, which began in Ottawa in 1986 and produced the Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion. The benchmark conference was followed by Adelaide in 1988, Sundsvall 1991, Jakarta 1997, Mexico-City 2000 and Bangkok 2005.

Overview: 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion The urgency of health promotion Overview The urgency of health promotion A global conference The implementation gap Mobilizing global champions The process The immediate outcomes Health and development today face unprecedented threats. The financial crisis threatens the viability of national economies in general and of health systems in particular. Global warming and climate change exert a toll in human life, especially in lower income countries. Security threats create a sense of shared uncertainty for communities around the world. These new challenges compound the development problems which have yet to be solved. And as the internationally agreed development goals appear increasingly unattainable, newer threats are being recognized: the inexorable growth of noncommunicable conditions in low and middle-income economies, and the threat of potentially catastrophic pandemics. 26-30 October 2009 Nairobi, Kenya 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion As the aspirations of global health are falling short of the achievable, the burden of ill-health is increasingly recognized to be inequitably distributed, between and within countries. In this context, health promotion has never been more timely or more needed. Over the period from the Ottawa Conference (1986) through the six global conferences to Bangkok (2005), a large body of evidence and experience has accumulated about the importance of health promotion as an integrative, cost-effective strategy, and as an essential component of health systems primed to respond adequately to these emerging concerns.