AHPA Updates

TIME TO CELEBRATE! There are now more than 50 Registered Health Promotion Practitioners in Australia ... And that's the most on the world!

The AHPA® Board, Branches and its committees work hard throughout the year to support and promote the health promotion profession and advocate for good health promotion policy, research and practice.

The final Communiqué is a bumper edition which includes Board updates and Branch yearly highlights!

Dr Joanne Walker, Director Policy and Strategy Development, National Rural Health Alliance and former AHPA® Director was successful in obtaining an AHPA bursary to attend the IUHPE conference in Rotorua earlier this year. As part of her application Jo committed to preparing an article on the conference. 

Jo’s article International conference focuses on sustainable development, ecological & cultural determinants of health summarises her thoughts including:
Perhaps the most confronting issue for me is the united experience of indigenous peoples from the ongoing impact of colonisation and entrenched inequity that goes from generation to generation for many indigenous peoples around the world. These inequities are now being exacerbated by planetary health impacts, one of which is climate change.

You can find the article here.

AHPA supported a number of members to attend the IUHPE 23rd World Conference on Health Promotion held in Rotorua, New Zealand 7-11 April. You can read about their experience here. 

The Community Health Ethics Board (CHEB) Working Group is pleased to provide AHPA members with an update on the CHEB pilot project. The aim is to develop a model that will build understanding of ethics for health promotion practice and the development of ethical informed practices within health and community based organisations in Australia.

Organisational and individual perspectives were sought during the initial stage of the project to determine preferred CHEB models and characteristics. Qualitative data were collected from participants at workshops held at AHPA’s Health Promotion Symposium in Canberra in August 2018; and the 23rd IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion in Rotorua in April 2019. An online survey was distributed to AHPA members in February 2019, followed by interviews last month with organisations that currently do not have access to a HREC and whose health promotion staff would be likely to use a CHEB.

Survey results are outlined in the infographic below, and the Working Group is currently analysing the interview results to finalise the recommendations for the CHEB model. Another update will be provided to AHPA members in the coming months. The CHEB Working Group would like to thank all workshop, survey and interview participants for their support and input.

If you have questions about this project please contact Dr Krysten Blackford at Curtin University on (08) 9266 2751 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The AHPA® mentoring program for people interested in or working in the field of health promotion. Applications have now closed and applicants will be contacted by the end of July. We will still be seeking more mentors so let us know if you're interested.  

Find our more here.

The AHPA 2019 Annual General Meeting Directors' report, Treasurer's report and Health Promotion Journal of Australia Editor's report are now available here. Find out all that AHPA has achieved in 2018!

The Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA®) nominations to the Board of Directors for the 2019-2020 term has now closed

The AHPA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Statement

AHPA aims to celebrate diversity, encourage inclusion and promote equitable outcomes for people of different gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, ability, ethnicity, race, and culture.

The AHPA® Board, Branches and its committees work hard throughout the year to support and promote the health promotion profession and advocate for good health promotion policy, research and practice.

The final Communiqué is a bumper edition which includes Board and Branch yearly highlights and AHPA Health Promotion Symposium scholarship recipients reports! Enjoy!

The AHPA  webinar on what's involved in registering as a Health Promotion Practitioner was a great success. The video is now available!

The 23rd IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion is now over! The Conference was held in Rotorua, New Zealand from 7 – 11 April 2019 and AHPA is proud to have been a partner. View the Rotorua Statements and stay tuned for more.

Well done to the organising committee for making the Symposium happen.

Croakey has an article Six reflections on health promotion – following AHPA2018 already up which you can find here.

The AHPA Board is pleased to announce Dr Hannah Badland as the inaugural AHPA Thinker in Residence. 

What is the AHPA Thinker in Residence?

AHPA recognises and rewards excellence and innovative thinking and is committed to progressing contemporary, evidence, informed, equitable and ethical health promotion practice, research and policy. Establishing a prestigious award, the AHPA Thinker in Residence, was one way to recognise and support outstanding thinkers in health promotion who are undertaking novel and transformative work that has the potential to profoundly impact and / or transform a broad area of practice or policy.

The Board of the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA®) together with the Research, Evaluation and Evidence Translation (REET) Committee would like to announce effective from January 01, 2018 the publication of the Health Promotion Journal of Australia will be housed with Wiley Blackwell Publishing.

The Health Promotion Scholarship Program WA is open now – this is a great opportunity for people in WA.

The AHPA WA Branch AGM includes a lecture and this year it’s been filmed for you to view.

AHPA was a proud partner of the 2017 World Congress on Public Health and the World Leaders Dialogue on Suicide Prevention for First Nations people held in Melbourne in April 2017.

We support marriage equality and demand action now. We have joined the Australian Marriage Equality movement along with thousands of other. We strongly encourage all members to vote YES for this long overdue reform.

Ray James Award winners Kristi Heesch and Michael Langdon reflect on their award and what it means to them and their work.

As we head to the end of the financial year AHPA is reminding all members to encourage others to join our Association!  

AHPA SA and PHAA SA argued for greater investment in prevention in the South Australian Department of Health.

CQU Rockhampton is offering a PhD Scholarship - it closes on the 27th February 2017 so be quick!

AHPA researchers are invited to participate in a study on guidelines for ethical decision-making about social media.

Advocacy in Action: Proposal for a Queensland Health Promotion Commission

In March 2015, a change of state leadership provided optimism and hope for investment and future direction for health promotion in Queensland. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk made a pre-election commitment to establish a Queensland Health Promotion Commission - an indication that the value of health promotion and prevention is strongly on the government’s agenda.

The AHPA^® branches, Board and its committees work hard throughout the year to support and promote the health promotion profession and advocate for good health promotion policy, research and practice.

Health Promotion Practitioner Registration - Apply Now!

The Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA®) is the National Accreditation Organisation (NAO) for the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) in Australia.  

Health Promotion professionals across Australia now have the opportunity to apply to earn the title IUHPE Registered Health Promotion Practitioner. See who is already registered!

Read Karen McPhail-Bell’s story about tweeting for AHPA in July 2016.

What kind of work do people do when working in health promotion? AHPA WA has collected stories from their members to put a face to health promotion in practice. Read more...

26 Sep 2016 - 27 Sep 2016. Ann Harding Conference Centre. University of Canberra, ACT

This is a multi-disciplinary event bringing national and international speakers and delegates from a variety of disciplines together to be informed and inspired to challenge, re-think and re-vision healthcare; focusing on wellness rather than illness.

AHPA Victoria held their first Professional Development session for 2016 on April 19th. The session focused on advocacy and special guests speakers for the night were Jane Martin from the Obesity Policy Coalition and Ben Hubbard, General Manager of Public Policy and Strategy.

A 2015 global survey of national climate change and health plans confirms Australia lags behind comparable countries in responding to the health impacts of climate change.^[i]

Melinda Edmunds, WA Branch President and AHPA 2016 Conference Co-Convenor is the inaugural winner of the Glen Paley Award. Judges noted Melinda’s passion and proactivity for health promotion and the Association

Annabel Axford and Drew Carter were presented with the Ray James award for their article Building workforce capacity for ethical reflection in health promotion: a practitioner’s experience.

The ACT Government have now released the findings from the community consultation on food and drink marketing. A summary of findings from the consultation, and non-confidential submissions, have been published on the ACT Government Healthy Living website.

AHPA is pleased to announce the second virtual issue of the Health Promotion Journal of Australian.

This Ottawa Charter edition provides a fascinating sample of articles published in the HPJA since the Journal’s inception in 1991. The articles, written by many of Australia’s health promotion leaders over the years, illustrate the way Australia has adopted the principles of the Ottawa Charter.

AHPA congratulates Professor Fran Baum, on her AO in the Queen’s Birthday Honours awarded recently. Fran was awarded the AO for her distinguished service to higher education as an academic and public health researcher, as an advocate for improved access to community health care, and to professional organisations.

Dear Members,

We are increasingly concerned about the impacts on the health of the Australian and global population from climate change – and the increased burden on the health sector from illnesses associated, for example with the air pollution caused by coal and diesel combustion. We want Australia (and the rest of the G7) to shift to cleaner, healthier energy sources, and source more electricity from the sun and the wind – this is better for people’s health, and better for the planet!

Health Alliance welcomes Greens’ new policies on hospital funding and private health insurance rebate.

The Health Promotion Journal of Australia, the flagship journal for AHPA, has launched the inaugural 'virtual issue (VI)' on the topic of 'Climate Change and Health Promotion'. See it here.

National Close the Gap Day is about Indigenous health equality. The Aim of National Close the Gap Day is to 'bring people together, to share information — and most importantly — to take meaningful action in support of achieving Indigenous health equality by 2030'. You can find out more here: you can download resources, register to hold an event or pledge your support to close the gap.

Health Promotion professionals across Australia will soon have the opportunity to be accredited as a Health Promotion Practitioner. In a major boost for the credibility and profile of the Health Promotion profession in Australia, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) has formally approved AHPA’s application to become the National Accreditation Organisation for Australia.

Congratulations to Professor Billie Giles-Corti and her team for their article:

B Giles-Corti, G Macaulay, N Middleton, B Boruff, F Bull , I Butterworth , H Badland, S Mavoa, R Roberts and H Christian. Developing a research and practice tool to measure walkability: a demonstration project. 2014. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 25(3), 160-166. Which won the 2015 Ray James Award for best paper in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia. The award was accepted by Dr Hannah Badland at the AHPA members’ meeting at the 2015 National Population Health Congress in Hobart (6-9 September).

AHPA, along with the rest of Australia and many others in several countries, mourn the death of a great man: Paul Pholeros who died in RPAH in Sydney on the 1 February 2016.

The end of the year provides as a fitting opportunity to share with you some of AHPA highlights in this final update for 2015. It has once again been a big year and we have achieved a lot. For an update on AHPA news see the President’s End of Year Update 2015.