International conference on assets for health and wellbeing across the life course:
26-27th September 2011,
British Library conference centre, London

The FULL conference programme and session details are now available online 

http://www.healthassetsconf.org.uk/

EARLYBIRD registration deadline extended until 29th August 

Confirmed Keynote speakers:

Prof Michael Resnick

Professor of Paediatrics and Public Health, University of Minnesota
'Internal Strengths, External Supports':  The Case for Promoting Resilience and Healthy Youth Development.

This presentation synthesizes 'state of the science' with the state of the art regarding the promotion of healthy youth development through programs, policy, and public health practice.

Michael D. Resnick, Ph.D. is Professor of Pediatrics, Public Health and Nursing, and holds the Konopka Chair in Adolescent Health and Development at the University of Minnesota.  He is director of the Leadership Education in Adolescent Health interdisciplinary fellowship program that has been held continuously at the University of Minnesota since 1978.  He also directs the Healthy Youth Development Prevention Research Center, dedicated to community-partnered research, training, and advocacy to promote adolescent health.

Resnick's research on resiliency and protective factors has been widely published and presented.  Various measures of key risk and protective factors developed with colleagues are used in surveys around the world to guide adolescent health programming and policy.  In terms of advocacy, Resnick has presented research on healthy youth development in the form of testimony to the United States Congress and at 7 White House conferences during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

 
Sir Dr Harry Burns

Chief Medical Officer for Scotland
The importance of early years in creating life long wellbeing

Sir Dr Harry Burns graduated in medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1974. Over the next 15 years he worked as a general surgeon and for the last six years of his surgical career was a consultant surgeon at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow. As the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Burns has direct involvement in the development of health policy in Scotland, including prevention, health promotion, health protection and harm reduction. Dr Burns dedicates a full chapter of his latest Annual Report (November 2010) to explaining the Assets Model, and how it can contribute to health improvement. Taking forward assets approaches in Scotland will require changes in mind set and approach within Scottish Government, local public services, Third Sector and communities themselves. This is not a new thing! Community development and various approaches have been used for many years, but there is a ground swell of interest now within Scotland, and this might be the right moment to re-emphasise an assets approach and promote it further.

 

 

Prof. Mel Bartley

Professor of medical sociology, University College London
Resilience as an asset for health across the life course

Professor Bartley is Director of the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at University College London. She is the author of "Health inequality: An introduction to Concepts, Theory and Methods" (Polity Press, ISBN-10: 0745627803). Her work has included research on health inequalities in men and women, with particular emphasis on measurement of social position and circumstances, and the relationships of unemployment and social mobility to health. Her current research interests include the effect of lifecourse processes on social and health advantage, disadvantage and resilience, and how these are influenced by economic and social policies.  She co-ordinates a scientific programme combining sociology, epidemiology, human biology, and statistics which includes using all of the UK's open-access longitudinal data sets to investigate policy-related questions such as the longer term effects of breast feeding and parent-child relationships, the relationship between unemployment and health, and the influences on quality of life as people grow older.

 

Dr Anja Baumann

WHO Regional Office for Europe
Empowerment as an asset for mental health

Dr Anja Esther Baumann is Technical Officer for Mental Health Promotion and Disorder Prevention at the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Being a long-term advocate for people with mental health problems and their families she engages particularly in the empowerment of mental health service users and the fight against health-related inequity vulnerable groups have to face in society. She is in charge of the WHO-EC Partnership Project on User Empowerment in Mental Health. Prior to her engagement at the WHO Regional Office for Europe she worked for ten years in the Psychiatric Clinic/Department of Psychiatry at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, where she was in charge of the implementation of a global public health programme against stigma and discrimination because of mental illness at national level. She holds an MA in Philosophy, Psychology and Linguistics and has a Ph.D. in Medical Sciences.



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