Institute of Health Promotion and Education

We are delighted to announce that the IHPE has joined the Shaping the Future collaboration. The Institute’s President, Professor Jackie Green, will join the project team.

The report Shaping the Future of Public Health: Promoting Health in the NHS, commissioned by the English Department of Health and the Welsh Assembly Government, was published in 2005. Its purpose was to define the roles, functions and development needs of specialised health promotion staff.

The Royal Society of Health, the Faculty of Public Health and the UK Voluntary Register for Public Health Specialists have been formally collaborating since spring 2006 to help to secure the recommendations of the report. Their work was funded last year by the English Department of Health and this year by all 4 UK Departments of Health.

The aims of the collaboration’s action plan (see www.specialisedhealthpromotion.org.uk for more information) are:

To achieve recognition and identity for specialised health promotion as an important discipline within public health
To develop an agreed career pathway for specialised health promotion staff, with supporting funded skills and competency development, professional supervision and appropriate accreditation and regulation, with an emphasis on practitioners and senior practitioners. This aim links with the Public Health Skills and Career Framework, which is available on www.phru.nhs.uk or www.skillsforhealth.org.uk.

The action plan will be reviewed now that IHPE have joined the collaboration.

Richard Parish, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Health said he was ‘absolutely delighted to be working in partnership with the IHPE on this important agenda. All the organizations in the collaboration have an important role in supporting health promotion practice and the new partnership will ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.’