Conference highlights broader approach

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Preventing diabetes by creating healthier communities will be the focus of a conference being held in Saskatoon from Feb. 12 to 14, 2002.

Building Better Tomorrows-Work Together on the Determinants of Health is a conference being organized by the Prairie Region Health Promotion Research Centre, funded jointly by Health Canada and Saskatchewan Health.

The conference is being held to increase people's understanding of population health promotion approaches, with a specific emphasis on how such approaches can help in the prevention of diabetes.

Colleen Zubkow is c-oordinator of the conference. She explained that, with the population health promotion approach, all the factors that affect the health of all the members of a community are considered when coming up with means of promoting health.

"We're really trying to learn about the conditions that support health. And to learn about that in terms of what communities are doing to prevent diabetes. And these are the types of things that could involve participation of the whole population," she said.

"That would involve focusing on projects that are taking action on what they call 'the determinants of health', the sort of underlying things that affect people's health. It's an approach that involves what they call 'multi-sector collaboration'. In other words, it's not just health looking at the prevention of diabetes; it involves education and social services, many sectors in the community. So there's a lot of different groups that are involved. And some of the projects are looking at ways, you know, how do you provide a supportive environment to reduce some of the inequalities and some of the barriers to everyone being healthy in the community?

"So more than just focusing on lifestyle changes-like you as an individual, what you do to prevent diabetes. What kinds of things can the community do so everyone is healthier? And it prevents diabetes for everyone in the community. And again, that's sort of focusing on the health of the population, not just the individual."

As well as taking a broader approach to health promotion, the population health promotion approach also stresses taking a more proactive approach, dealing with health problems before they actually become problems.

"So that if you were looking at an example like preventing diabetes, you would also be working with children, not just with people who are being diagnosed with diabetes or who are older. The earlier you can sort of influence and work with people-take action earlier-then that's also part of prevention," Zubkow said.

To illustrate the population health promotion approach, Zubkow described an approach being tried in some schools, where policies are changed to only allow healthy snacks in the schools.

"There wouldn't be junk food. And then that helps all children. It's not just trying to teach children not to drink a lot of sugar pop and eat a lot of junk food. It's actually making it so it's an easier choice for everybody, because the school only offers in their machines and their snacks, healthier food choices. But to do that, you have to work with the schools and the boards and all their policies around what they do in the schools, and that takes a lot of community work."

The first day of the conference will feature a panel discussion on what population health promotion is, while the second day will feature presentations by two organizations that have been involved in population health promotion in the area of diabetes for a number of year -the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project in Kahnawake, Que., and the Food For All Coalition in northeastern Saskatchewan. The conference will wrap up on the third day with an interactive session.

Opportunities have also been built in to the conference schedule to allow both presenters and participants to share their ideas and experiences.

Zubkow hopes people attending the conference will come away with "a clearer understanding of what the ppulation health promotion approach is."

"A lot of people are approaching health in their communities this way already. They just don't call it population health promotion . . . people are doing it all the time, and that's actually now what some of the literature is saying, this is the best way to work in communities and prevent, in this case, Type II diabetes.

"Yes, you do need the individual counseling and the healthy lifestyle things for individuals, and you certainly need the treatment based. But this conference is basically saying we also need to look at how to prevent it in other ways, and this is what this approach is talking about-starting earlier, and working broader in the community."

The conference registration fee is $100 per person, and includes two breakfasts, two luncheons, two evening diners, refreshment breaks and all conference materials. The deadline for conference registration is Jan. 25, 2002.

For more information call Colleen Zubkow at 1-800-667-7913 or 306-466-2074.