Health Promotion in Canada: Provincial, National and International Perspectives

Ann Pederson, Michel O'Neill, Irving Rootman Saunders Canada, pounds sterling20, pp 401 ISBN 0 920513 09 3 In the health promotion world, the cognoscenti still talk wistfully about life “before Ottawa” and “after Ottawa.” Something happened at an international conference in the Canadian capital in 1986 that changed the face of health promotion for ever. The Ottawa charter was a consensus statement setting out the fundamentals of what health promotion should really be about in the late 20th century, and it heralded a sea change in the way we think about and practise health promotion. Hitherto the emphasis had been on the individual and his or her risk factors—a …