Health Promotion Through Alcohol Prevention

It was great that Esbjörn and me got the opportunity to conduct an IOGT International side event at the IUHPE conference in Pattaya.

Health promotion through alcohol prevention

The International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) and Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) organised the 21^st IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion, from 25 – 29 August, Pattaya, Thailand.

It was a fantastic opportunity for IOGT International to be present at the conference because it aimed to contribute to the development of equity and social justice across the globe by offering a unique platform for dialogue on the best investments for health between participants from various sectors from all over the world.

Our session was on promotion of Health through prevention of alcohol harm.

#LifeSetFree

And to be honest, it was very successful with more than 20 participants representing different parts of the world attending and generating a very interesting discussion at the end.

Side event participants #HeartDriven

In the beginning I wondered about how we can attract people to our event but Esbjörn was so smart in getting people and the promotion flyer designed by Kristina helped a lot to spread the message. The participants from the African region were repeatedly saying to that IOGT should step up work in many countries in the region where the alcohol problem is very high.

#LifeSetFree

My effort to combine the Health promotion theory with evidence-based alcohol prevention strategy was successful and so Esbjörn and myself feel happy about it.
Presenting real cases where communities enabled people to increase control over their lives, and to improve their health and well-being made it easier for the participants to understand what we say, than telling them theories.

#LifeSetFree

And it is always a pleasure to share real life experiences from the field. As ADIC approach moves beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions, it matches the health promotion concept. I have to remember to share those video clips from my presentation with all who are interested in alcohol prevention.

It was great that we were able to take part there as it was the first time that IUHPE held its global conference in the Asian region.

I am impressed by the very active young volunteers who were involved in the organising of the conference and extend my thanks and appreciation to the organising team and everyone who worked so – as we say in IOGT – heart-driven to make this huge conference with about 2100 participants a big success.

Personally it was so nice to meet my friend and IOGT International family member Teera from Stop Drink Network and some other Thai friends who met earlier in other seminars some years back.

Outside of the conference happenings and all the networking, I also enjoyed walking in the “walking street“ but I felt sad about some foreigners who restricted their enjoyment to having a glass of beer after coming to such a beautiful country. As I said during our Side Event when discussing with the participants some concrete steps to prevent alcohol harm in communities:

Go #HeartDriven instead

Not only the conference, I enjoyed and appreciated the work and the company of Esbjorn very much. It was so funny the story he told about a guy who he met in the gym. If I am not mistaken he shared it on Facebook.