The Conference will address issues around European integration and professional collaboration along two streams: first, establishing dialogue among different ethno-political cultures in different areas of the European Health Promotion, and secondly, appropriate transfer and application of the knowledge and experience of different professional groups. With regard to the first stream, the Conference will address the need to develop opportunities and facilitate cultural exchange between the countries lining the Mediterranean Rim and Eastern European countries. As far as the second stream is concerned, the Conference will provide a forum to identify, discuss and tackle the barriers which hinder cooperation between knowledge from within and outside the health care sector, both being equally essential for meeting Health Promotion goals.

Starting from these two streams, the Conference will deal with issues related to values, with respect to the planning and evaluation components of Health Promotion action. The implications of transferability with and among various cultures will be discussed, with the intention of exploring mechanisms for transfer and applicability of both knowledge and processes as a basis for possible new strategies for Health Promotion which are suitable for different contexts and needs. An analysis of partnership and evaluation will aim at extracting those elements that may strongly support cooperation between organisations and institutions, and specifically create effective international public-private partnerships for developing, implementing and supporting these processes. Finally, the Conference will consider the evaluation process by proposing a means for reflection on the peculiar specificities related to the assessment of Health Promotion activities, acknowledging the need for a balance between sound technical and rigorous scientific methodology on one hand, and the need for participatory evaluation methods and approaches involving citizens as well as communities on the other.

This Conference will aim to comprehensively address the political, cultural and technical aspects of Health Promotion. Particular attention will be devoted to the needs of Eastern Europe and North Africa, with an emphasis on capacity building for those countries in which Health Promotion is less developed. The Conference will highlight the need to improve the methodology of evidence-based Health Promotion in terms of both quality and effectiveness, including participatory approaches to evaluation taking into account involvement of civil society. The target audience will be mainly public administrators, politicians, policy and decision-makers, scientists, researchers, evaluators and other professionals and practitioners from different fields in the public, voluntary and private sectors (i.e. transport, housing, education, environment).