By Tricitynews Reporter
Chandigarh 09th
March:- Public health and communication
experts and policymakers gather in the two-day 3rd Public
Health Symposium at Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research
(PGI), organized by the School of Public Health, PGI. The focus of this
symposium is on ‘Health Promotion’; with a theme ‘Ensuring health lives and promotes
well-being for all at all ages’.
Welcoming the
participants, Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Professor and Head,
School of Public Health said that this symposium will result in actionable
policy recommendations. He added that all
sectors, not just the health sector, need to contribute to health promotion.
For example, policymakers in Chandigarh have much to contribute to making the
city not only beautiful, but also the first healthy city in India. In his key
note speech, Director of PGI, Dr. Subhash Verma, highlighted that more
importance should be given to preventive and promotive aspects of health. We
must start from the very beginning starting from home, school and society in
general.
The symposium
was inaugurated by the Mayor of Chandigarh, Asha Jaswal said that Chandigarh
Municipal Corporation tries to make Swacch Bharat Abhiyan a Jan Andolan
(people’s movement). Unless we have clean city, we can’t think of a healthy
city. She was open for suggestions and concrete and innovative ideas from the
symposium that can be used by policymakers.
Dr. Sanjeev
Kumar, Executive Director, NHSRC, stressed that as health scenario is changing
rapidly, we need to change our orientation and start working with other
sectors, and change our focus from disease to population as a whole”, and
emphasized the need to focus on health outcome framework for health promotion
in a comprehensive manner.
Several speakers acknowledged the
power of media in promoting health. Media has an enormous power in influencing
the health of communities”, acknowledged Prof. Dr. Sanjay Wadwalkar, Punjab
University, but pointed out that there are very few media persons who are trained
or focus on health.
Dr. Brian
Joseph, Commissioner, Law Reform Commission of Nova Scotia, shared his
experiences from Canada and pointed out that Intersectoral coordination is a
challenge in India and abroad and added that much needs to be done in different
sectors often in a limited time, which is the most important constraint.”
Dr. Mirai
Chatterjee, Director, SEWA, emphasised that health promotion should be put on
the public agenda like education, and health promotion training should be
strengthened for grass-root level health educators such as ASHA.
In the
session on health literacy, Dr. Manmeet Kaur, PGI, presented results from a
recent pilot study which found that health literacy levels in Chandigarh and
Punjab were much lower than that among most Asian and European countries. She
expressed that, “Providing information alone is not sufficient, it is critical
to enable people to understand and apply it.” Talking about the importance of
people-to-people communication, Bhawani Tripathy, UNICEF, said that leadership
and governance are lacking for bringing about the desired change to promote
health. People-to-people communication is more effective than other media and
also sustainable to achieve health promotion.
Experts like
Dr. Sanjay Badwalker acknowledged that it is easy to talk about behaviour
change but very difficult to bring about change.
Talking about
the role of Information Technology, J.S. Sahota, General Manager, BSNL, “BSNL
has started Optical Fibre Network in several villages of Punjab – which are
likely to improve health literacy levels as well.
Dr.
Shivinder, National Health Mission, Punjab, presented highlights of Punjab
government’s contribution to health promotion through Sehat Jagrukta Muhim
(Health Insights Campaigns) in Punjab using several hundred publicity vans.
