Challenges in community action for health

Where does Community Action for Health now stand two decades after the Ottawa Charter, which defined support for community-based health initiatives as the core strategy of health promotion? How can the community contribute to developing "health for all"? What can primary healthcare initiatives that are rooted in a community achieve under their own steam and where are their limits? How can "health from below" models be meaningfully combined with national planning and international action? What role can Swiss organizations play in community-based health promotion - and where are the limits? How can responsibilities and capacities within a community be widened and activated and how can traditional attitudes and role perceptions be changed? What can be done to ensure that all groups and interests - including disadvantaged ones - within a specific community have an equal say?

Photo: IAMANEH Switzerland, Member of the MMS Network

At this workshop organized by the Medicus Mundi Switzerland Network within the Geneva Forum "Towards Global Access to Health", three illustrations will permit to discuss specific aspects of the above questions:

1. Scaling up peer-education programmes
   The example of HIV-prevention in Douala, Cameroon
2. Scaling up grassroot level health projects
   T he example of the VHAI in India
3. Arising awareness about HIV/AIDS in the NGOs' work
   The example of Memory Work at the level of aidsfocus.ch

Contacts

• Chair: Dr Nicolaus Lorenz, president of Medicus Mundi Switzerland and head of the Swiss Center for International Health at the Swiss Tropical Institut, Basel.
• Co-chair: Dr Beat Stoll, Institute of social and preventive Medicine University of Geneva, committee member of Medicus Mundi Switzerland

The Geneva Forum "Towards Global Access to Health"

30 August-1 September 2006

The Forum is jointly organized by the Geneva University Hospitals and the Medicine School of the University of Geneva, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Geneva Hospital which has already a long standing tradition of international cooperation in the field of health.

The Geneva Forum, under the flags of equity, training and partnership, will provide a unique opportunity for all participants to present and explore innovative partnerships and programmes facilitating access to health.

In the context of a globalizing economy, the challenges involved in ensuring access to health have become a matter of great concern. The crucial question that must be considered relates to how health systems can respond to a growing need for action. Health and especially access to health are preliminary conditions or determinants that can improve social welfare and societal stability.

The Geneva Forum, under the flags of equity, training and partnership, will provide a unique opportunity for all participants to present and explore innovative partnerships and programmes facilitating access to health.