ABSTRACT
In 1986, the first international conference on health promotion was held in Ottawa, where the Charter for Health Promotion was launched, with the subtitle 'the move towards a new public health'. However, it seems that the birth of the health promotion programme was a painful one, particularly in the form of tensions between the technical and activist groups within public health at the WHO, as well as the medical and non-medical paradigms (: 30). As many have observed, health promotion, as well as the new public health, continue to be contested concepts. According to Kickbusch who led the WHO's global health promotion programme, which included responsibility for drafting the Ottawa Charter health promotion was 'not a new and separate discipline, but a necessary and timely reconsideration of public health'.
