Prof. Jürgen M. Pelikan, Ph.D., is the Founder and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion in Hospitals and Health Care now at Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (Austrian Public Health Institute). As principal investigator (PI) of the WHO model project "Health and Hospital" and the first European Pilot Hospital Project he has co-initiated the International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services. Since its start, he is Chair of the Scientific Committee of the annual International HPH Conferences and advisor to the HPH Governance Board. Prof. Pelikan has an outstanding expertise in HPH-related projects including directing two EU-projects Health Promotion in Primary Health Care, General Practice and Community Pharmacy, and Migrant Friendly Hospitals. He was also involved as work package leader and PI in the first European Health Literacy Survey, the Diabetes Literacy Project and Health Literate Health Care Organizations. Prof. Pelikan, a sociologist, has authored numerous publications on the theory of health and health promotion including salutogenesis, the settings approach, evaluation in health promotion, quality in health care, health literacy, and health literate health care organizations. Concerning HPH, he (co)authored the Budapest Declaration, the Vienna Recommendations, the 18 HPH core strategies and the New Haven Recommendations. He was a former President of the European Society of the Sociology of Health and Medicine  and an elected member of the board of trustees of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education, a consultant to WHO/Euro, WHO-HQ and the European Commission. He was a member of the editorial board of the journal Health Promotion International and is a co-editor of Clinical Health Promotion – Research and Best Practice for patients, staff and community.

The development and progress of the International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services can be told as a story of successes, yet, there are potentials for further improvements as well. Having started with conceptual considerations based on the Ottawa Charter in the late 1980s, the concept has materialized into an international network comprising up to 800 member organizations around the globe. By that, the network is not only the second-oldest health promotion network initiated by the World Health Organization, but represents one of WHOs continuously stable and developing networks.

As it is certainly not possible to grasp the whole wealth of potential insights from this network in one presentation, this keynote will invite the audience to a joint travel in time, starting in the last century and leading to the future with a strong focus on milestones and stages in which the network has reinvented itself to grow and achieve its agenda. During this development, the international conferences played an important part in shaping the network’s agenda in the past. Therefore, having a closer look at these conferences can also help to better understand present and possible future opportunities and challenges for the international HPH network.

The lecture will give a largely systematic reconstruction of 25 years of international HPH conferences including core developments prior to the 1st International HPH Conference in Warszawa, Poland, in 1993. Looking at the topics, programs, participants and local hosts of the conferences, it will be analyzed how the network has developed, adapted to changes and challenges in the relevant environments of health care and how it has changed its internal structures and processes to grow successfully over nearly three decades. Finally, first ideas for strategic priorities to maintain the international HPH network for another 25 creative annual conferences will be reflected.

Current Position 

• Director-General, Health Promotion Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan
• Associate Professor, School of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan

Education 

• Dr.P.H., School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, U.S.A.
• M.P.H., School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, U.S.A.
• M.D., School of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Working Experience

• Director, Department of Medical Humanities, School of Medicine, Tzu Chi University
• Director, Heart Lotus Care Ward, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital
• Secretary-general, Taiwan Society of Health Promotion Hospitals
• Director, Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network
• Director, Department of Family Medicine, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital
• Director, Center for Faculty Development and Instructional Resources, Tzu Chi University
• Deputy Director General, Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health, Taiwan
• Attending Physician, Department of Family Medicine, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital
• Attending Physician, Department of Geriatrics, Taipei Hospital
• Resident, Department of Family Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital

Major Research Area

• Family Medicine, palliative care, Community Health, health promotion, medical education

The International Health Promoting Hospital Network was established by the WHO in 1990, and Taiwan became the first network member in 2006. The Health Promotion Administration of Taiwan develops policies to assist hospitals re-orient services and organizational culture from treatment to health promotion, improving the health gains of the patients, staff and community. The Taiwan HPH network has reached 163 members and is the largest block within the International HPH Network.

Based on the action plans of the International HPH Network, Taiwan has developed six major strategies to promote HPH amongst healthcare institutions:

1. Inter-sectoral collaboration: aside from promotion of HPH policies by the central government, the tasks of providing guidance on health promotion are carried out by the local health bureaus in cities and counties. The local health bureaus assist the healthcare institutions on obtaining HPH certification, and also improve relationship with institutions within their jurisdictions.
2. Influence change in leadership: raise the hospital managerial understanding of health promotion and to analyze the benefits of health promotion for staff, patients and relatives, so that HP policies are incorporated as one of the core quality or business goals.
3. Create standards and indicators: based on the WHO-HPH Standards and indicators, Taiwan establishes the standards pertinent to local situation. Outside experts and organizations are commissioned to provide consultation services; hospitals are communicated on the definitions of the indicators and scoring standards; creative projects such as the Age-friendly and Environment-friendly issues are incorporated in to the standards to encourage diverse participation.
4. Education and training: staff of various level within the institution learn and improve their knowledge on health promotion through education and training; hospitals are instructed how to conduct outcomes assessment and to provide feedbacks on training outcomes for future improvement.
5. Communication and advocacy: engage in health promotion international affairs; invite civil organizations to participate in HPH activities; invite hospital members to participate in the annual HPH conferences and share Taiwan’s experiences with other countries, so each can learn from each other; the environment-friendly and age-friendly health promotion have been adopted by some countries after learning from Taiwan experiences; good interaction and experience sharing are the driving forces behind continuous improvement.
6. Provides incentives: other than receiving funding, excellent performers are recognized for their efforts through various awards, such as benchmark model, excellences, organization restructuring, friendly workplace and creative projects (over 70). 

The main goal of the promotion of HPH by the Taiwanese Government is to foster the mentality of “happy staff and happy patient”. Hospitals will become the frontline base of community health promotion, and in the future Taiwan will work to integrate other health promotion modalities, such as school, workplace and community, to further improve the development of community health promotion. Additionally, Taiwan will continue to incorporate health literacy and patient-centered shared-decision making modes into the overarching health promotion concepts to better promote patient-focused services.

Richard Alderslade has worked for thirty-five years in public health, national and local health administration, research and higher education in the United Kingdom, and for ten years in humanitarian and development international health. He holds the degrees of MA. BM. BCh. (Oxon) and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP) and the Faculty of Public Health (FFPH), both in the United Kingdom.

Internationally, he has worked for eight years in humanitarian public health work with the World Health Organisation’s Regional Office for Europe, including five years managing all the Office's humanitarian programs within the Region. Between 2010 and 2012, he was Senior Adviser in Health Policy at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen, Denmark, working on the strengthening of public health capacities and services across the European Region, and a new health policy framework for the Region, Health 2020. He continues to act as an Adviser to the WHO European Regional Office including to the Program on Public Health and Migration.

Since 2013, he has been a Teaching Fellow in Public Health at St George’s Hospital, University of London. He also teaches public and global health subjects at Durham and Nottingham Universities in the United Kingdom, and at New York University in the United States.

The discipline of public health has the potential to improve health and well-being more equitably, within the global focus of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the WHO European Regional focus of the health policy framework Health 2020 and the European Action Plan for the Strengthening of Public Health Capacities and Services (the EAP-PHS).

All the determinants of health must be considered within national health policies, strategies and plans, and the response must be multi-actor and multi-sector, focusing on whole of government (WOG), whole of society (WOS) and Health in All Policies (HiAP) approaches. Moving "upstream" to tackle todays burden of noncommunicable diseases through health promotion and disease prevention approaches is fundamental.

All components of health systems need to work in partnership in an integrated and coordinated way over the long term, focusing on both population and individual health needs. Patients who can be served and supported in a clinically sound way in a primary health care setting should be, with health promotion and disease prevention being an integral component of primary health care services.  Yet hospitals must also respond to the rising levels of noncommunicable disease among ageing populations, offering health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment focused around individual needs.

Patients with chronic problems require support to achieve the best possible health related quality of life. Often such interventions are not systematically offered to all patients, nor are patients satisfied with the communication and listening skills of their doctors and other health professionals.

Health Promoting Hospitals (HPH) is focused primarily on patients and their relatives, with a focus also on the needs of vulnerable groups, hospital staff, the community population and the environment. HPH is an example of the settings approach to health promotion and can contribute both to today's complexity of patient management yet also to maximising the contribution of health systems to improvements in health and well-being overall.