SCOPE & PURPOSE

The ageing of populations, the increase of chronic diseases, trends towards increasing mobility, expectations of patients and users, and the discussion about quality and effectiveness of health services have increasingly focused on the need for better continuity of care and cooperation between health service providers and across country borders. From a health promotion perspective, such integration contributes to better health gain of patients, staff and communities as it is an important precondition for incorporating health promotion quality criteria into routine services as well as to offer specific additional health promotion services across the healthcare chain. Against this background, the HPH conference 2009 will invite representatives of all health professions and all types of health services, as well as of health policy and science, to share views on and to discuss the following specific issues:

Health care without walls – a vision for health promotion in health care?
The allocation of specific health care responsibilities to different types of service providers, and the organisation of cooperation between them have constituted a subject of ongoing debate in health policy, in quality, and increasingly also from a patient / user perspective. How does health promotion react and contribute to this debate? What are the demands, potential contributions and recommendations for possible future directions of health promotion in health care from the perspectives of different stakeholders?

Integrated health promoting healthcare for different target groups
Health promotion principles call for the strive for equity in health and for taking into account the specific needs and demands of different population groups when planning and providing health promotion interventions – a strategy that is also supported by the evidence that a good understanding of the needs and expectations of target groups will increase their health outcomes. How can health service providers meet this challenge? What specific approaches are there to reach and address different groups of (potential) users / patients, including the socio-economically disadvantaged? The conference shall exemplarily explore models and examples for children and adolescents / migrants / psychiatric patients, older persons, chronic patients and unemployed people.

How to organise health promoting cooperation between different healthcare providers
The successful cooperation between different and often competing types of service providers is a very demanding endeavour. This is even more true for health promoting cooperation which sometimes lacks supportive frameworks and therefore needs agreements on relevant values, norms and services. A specific challenge is the management of patient data and information of relevance for health promotion between different providers. The conference shall explore perspectives and potential contributions of IT services and telemedicine, as well as of different models of successful integration and coordination of service provision, to tackling these challenges.

Political, legal and economic preconditions for health promoting health care without walls
What can be learnt from different types of health systems about the best political, legal and financial frameworks for health promoting healthcare? The conference will discuss perspectives of international bodies like WHO and the European Union and compare different types of health care organisations, like HMO and NHS systems.

	PROGRAM ELEMENTS

Conference topics were presented and discussed in keynote lectures and panels, paper sessions, workshops, and poster sessions. In addition, a number of satellite events have been organised. Further information on how to submit conference papers is available in the call for papers
In addition, a number of satellite events shall take place before and during the conference (see conference program)

	TARGET GROUPS

The conference provides a forum for exchange and further development of knowledge and experiences for the following target groups:

•••• Health care professionals from the medical, nursing and therapeutic fields;
•••• Hospital and health care managers;
•••• Representatives from patient organisations and other NGOs;
•••• Representatives from health policy and health administration;
•••• Public health actors and experts;
•••• Health and health promotion scientists and practitioners; and
•••• Health care consultants.

	ACCREDITATION

Please do also note that the conference has been granted 6 credits from the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME). To open the pdf-file, please enter the code 2432.

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