Workshop organized by Health Promotion Alliance Cameroon (HPAC) in collaboration with Denis & Lenora Foretia Foundation, Cameroon,

BACKGROUND

In recent decades, the concept of health promotion (HP) has received increasing global attention. In 1986, the first international conference was organized by the WHO in Ottawa, Canada, which led to the creation of the Ottawa Charter. This Charter is a landmark document and has been influential in informing the conceptualization, goals, and implementation of HP. The principles of HP set forth in this Charter are still used as a reference document to guide theory and practice. The Charter presents five action areas: design healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community actions, develop personal skills, and re-orient health services using three strategies—enabling, mediating, and advocating—to improve health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently mainstreamed health promotion in global health and issued a call to action for countries to invest in HP to ensure sustainable health systems. In addition, the WHO is working on developing a global strategy for health promotion, and the current pandemic has demonstrated the dire need for health promotion to support communities and systems in becoming more resilient in addressing epidemics and pandemics. Based on these action plans, there is a need to conduct some situational assessment on the perspective of health promotion in our community, and identify gaps, challenges and opportunities. The goal of the workshop is to create awareness on the important role of health promotion from the holistic approach, brain storm with the community to identify gaps, challenges and areas of intervention to inform our strategic planning and programs to inform strategic plan and enable us to develop a road map to support health promotion activities in Cameroon.

Objective

• To provide an overview of concept of health promotion in reference to the Ottawa Charter
• Discussion on Health Promotion approaches
• To provide an understanding of social determinants of health and its relevance
• To raise awareness on non-communicable disease and brainstorm on risk factors, causes and challenges contextualizing for the specific district in question
• To explore perspectives of COVID19, the current state, challenges, and perception of COVID19 vaccine contextualizing for the specific district in question
• To collect empirical evidence and synthesize lessons learnt toward designing potential intervention strategies for the district
• Develop a SWOT analysis based on participants information to inform strategic planning and action for the district and HPAC

Scope of workshop

The workshop is focus on some priority topics relevant to the context which include an overview of the concept of health promotion and approaches, social determinants of health and its correlates, noncommunicable diseases, understanding risk factors and causes, and the current COVID19 pandemic, perspectives and challenges. The workshop has five modules and four break-out sessions. Each module presents a learning objective, a 30 or 45 minutes presentation to educate participants on the content of the module followed by a break out session for another 45miniutes that will enable participants to brainstorm based on their understanding of the materials and their immediate environment using specific disease conditions or community issue. Each module begins and ends with an evaluation of participants understanding of the content and feedback.

Duration

The workshop is a one-day event which starts at 9 am and ends at 4.45pm.

Participants

Participants will include community health workers, youths (both in schools and out of school), and local community members including women and nurses (if possible). All participants are expected to be of a minimum age 21 and above, both men and women. The workshop strives for an equal balance in gender
representation. The workshop is organized to accommodate a maximum of 20 participants plus facilitators. Consent for photo image will be taken from each participant during the workshop.

Materials

The workshop will provide participants with facial mask and hand sanitizer, pens, and charting sheet.

Logistics

Participants will be compensated for their transport to and from the workshop, coffee break and launch will be provided.

Venue

The workshop will be hosted at main office Yaoundé

Language

The workshop will be facilitated and coordinated mainly in French; however, some sessions may be presented in English but a summary in French will be provided as applicable.

Evaluation

An evaluation sheet will be distributed to all participants at the end of the workshop to gather feedback.