Contents
I Introduction
II Lorraine Telford
III Irving Rootman
IV Barb Willet
V Larry Hershfield
VI Alison Stirling
VII Robyn Kalda
VIII Noelle Gadon
I Introduction
This is the 800th edition of the OHPE. To celebrate this impressive milestone we asked founders and contributors to offer their reflections on how the bulletin has changed or stayed the same over the years, and why it is valuable and continues to inspire health promoters across the province and beyond.
Here’s to another 800 issues! Enjoy.
II Lorraine Telford
From my perspective and recollection, Noelle (Gadon), Alison (Stirling) and I started the OHPE, we designed and named it. One conversation between Larry (Hershfield) and Alison gave rise to the idea to collect, organize and send current events and news about Health Promotion weekly by email to our clients of The Health Communication Unit (THCU), and Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse (OPC). Larry was often overheard cursing about having to use email – getting all those CLICK4HP messages was not making him happy! Doing the weekly email was added to my duties (without an increase in hours, I must add, for which I protested to deaf ears). Noelle stepped in right away and we started working with Alison, and so it began. I would like to take credit for the idea of the features, but like other words written by people long after the fact, who knows what is true? The job postings were a most valued and useful component. We had no trouble receiving those weekly, the features, on the other hand, were sometimes harder to pull off, we eventually had to go to features every two weeks.
One feature I wrote created quite a controversy, it was the first time we had “feedback” on any feature at all, so despite the negative response, we were pleased. A public health staff thought adding a website link for fathers who support each other in legal fights to have custody of their children should not have been included in the resource list in a feature about Fathering. Today, I think you can see the bias and we continue to include sources for different angles for an issue (people didn’t get it that it wasn’t an endorsement or agreement). These were early days of the internet; we were a bit worried this could lead to trouble for the bulletin but with a brief conversation everyone moved on.
III Irving Rootman
It is hard to believe that more than sixteen years have passed since the first issue of OHPE. So many years have passed, when I was asked to write this reflection I couldn’t remember exactly what I had contributed to this publication. In an effort to refresh my memory, I went to the website and did a search using my name and was surprised to see five pages of items with my name in them. Some of them were pieces that I wrote specifically for OHPE, but the majority were books or articles that I authored or edited over the last sixteen years, items in which I was cited, and descriptions of projects of the Centre for Health Promotion. Others referred to work that I have done or been involved in since I left Toronto including a Pre-Conference workshop on the Future of Health Promotion that I helped organize at the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) Conference last year.
Thus, this small bulletin that appeared weekly over the last sixteen years as a result of the extraordinary commitment and dedication of individuals such as Alison Stirling, Larry Hershfield and Noelle Gadon is not only a personal history for me and others, but also a history of the development of the field of health promotion in Canada. It has also been a very effective tool for reaching out to others who are interested in health promotion and for networking and capacity-building. To the latter end, I would like to draw your attention to the follow-up to last year’s workshop which will take place in Ottawa at the CPHA Conference on June 10 from 2:00 – 3:30. I hope to see you there so that we can continue our dialogue about the future of health promotion, but if you can’t be there I hope you will follow the outcomes of this workshop through future issues of OHPE.
In the meantime, I would like to congratulate everyone who has contributed to this valuable resource over the last sixteen years and express my thanks to those who are committed to continuing to do so.
IV Barb Willet
I can clearly recall the day we released the first edition of the OHPE. It was an exciting moment for Health Nexus, then known as the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse, as we ventured boldly into the relatively unknown digital world. Concepts such as knowledge exchange were still relatively new to the field, but we were, and have always been, committed to facilitating the sharing of timely and current health promotion information. We knew OHPE was an innovative approach but I don’t believe we were prepared for the impact that this little newsletter would have within the sector. In addition to quantity, the breadth and scope of OHPE subscribers is impressive for they represent the wide range of individuals who are committed to, and working to, support health promotion within Ontario, across Canada and even internationally. When travelling, I regularly meet people who are subscribers or familiar with the bulletin.
I believe the success of OHPE is rooted in three key factors. Content is identified both by the staff as well as subscribers and others so that each edition reflects the needs and interests of the field. Developed in partnership, first with The Health Communication Unit and most recently with Public Health Ontario, OHPE maintains a strong editorial team that brings different perspectives to discussions while working collaboratively to provide overall direction. A commitment to a strong evaluative component ensures that OHPE remains relevant and user-friendly.
For Health Nexus, the overwhelming response to OHPE generated many positive returns. One of the most obvious is Le Bloc-Notes. OHPE provided the impetus for Health Nexus to launch a French electronic health promotion bulletin. Serving the needs of the francophone community, Le Bloc-Notes has a very different tone and approach but similar mandate.
OHPE was the first electronic health promotion bulletin in Canada and, I am proud to say, continues to be the premier source of health promotion information.
V Larry Hershfield
The more things change, the more OHPE stays the same!
While this statement could be interpreted many a way, my intent is to salute sustainability, traditional values, stability…
Of course, the knowledge transfer field and technology have changed tremendously since OHPE began. My consulting practice today is largely about digital applications, particularly intelligent interactive learning and practice tools. It is barely noon, and I have used email, the web including a modest WordPress site I create myself, SlideShare, LinkedIn and Twitter already.
Yet OHPE carries on with the same open-source coding, search vocabulary, and interface. It still relies on volunteer contributions and information sharing. On the grand scale of things, it costs next to nothing. Old friends Barb (Willet), Robyn (Kalda), Alison (Stirling), Jodi (Thesenvitz), and yes Noelle (Gadon) (object of three farewell parties!) are still involved.
I take this as very positive. OHPE continues to meet a great information need for a great network of great people. If it ain’t broke….
VI Alison Stirling
I am the “proud parent” of OHPE and its 800 successes, and I also fret about how the progeny looks and if it is getting enough to sustain it.
Issue 1 – One good idea gave birth to OHPE and it continues to grow: “…we thought this might be a bridge to the wealth of information without overloading personal time and ‘space’…” I wrote that introduction to the first Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin in 1997 (https://www.ohpe.ca/epublish/1/v1997n1 ). It stands as the core of OHPE 799 issues later, being a link to news, jobs and ideas.
400 issues and eight years old, the OHPE team reflected on eight years of production (https://www.ohpe.ca/node/278). Keep it simple in format, dream big, welcome new and old, be flexible in structure, and learn from the unexpected. I’d left OHPE in others capable hands. At that time in 2005, my big dream of a national HP network, an interactive website with regional and national content, and supported by multiple funding sources, had not turned out as expected. The simple, flexible OHPE continued to thrive on its own.
700 issues, 14 years old, I celebrated with the OHPE team, and hoped that the shift in the partnership from The Health Communication Unit to what is now called Public Health Ontario would help OHPE evolve (https://www.ohpe.ca/node/12148).
800 issues. While my OHPE involvement now is limited to occasional reflections, I believe that the baby born in 1997 is fully mature at 16 – old even by Internet standards. It may not look as stylish as hoped, and I am concerned about how it will get enough funds to sustain it. However OHPE is strong and supported by many. The high appeal aspects of OHPE – based on low tech, minimal change, maximum access, run by committed few, and reliant on content from many – is a model for our time.
Back to where we began in issue 1 – inviting you to be content creators and more: “You define its value, its content, and its reach. New approaches and information sharing technologies emerge continually on the Internet. We invite your exploration of the possibilities.” (https://www.ohpe.ca/epublish/1/v1997n1)
VII Robyn Kalda
I first became really involved in OHPE in 2004, when Alison Stirling went on educational leave and handed its day-to-day technical maintenance to me (gulp). That was somewhere around issue 380, when OHPE had about 3600 subscribers and ran on a custom-built Cold Fusion web database.
More than 400 issues later, as we close in on issue 800, OHPE has more than 6700 subscribers and the database has been through several major Open Source database systems. Each move compounds the technical acrobatics, as our programmer must delicately negotiate the legacies of previous database moves – like a juggler adding yet more flaming torches to the act. Being involved with OHPE has been an excellent technical education as well as an excellent health promotion education. As we look ahead to the upgrade our subscribers have told us it’s well past time to initiate, I look forward (whenever it may happen) to the adventure of again settling OHPE’s database of more than 14,000 items into a new and more modern home.
VIII Noelle Gadon
As far as we know, OHPE is still the one and only cross-field health promotion newsletter, and we are quite proud of reaching our 800th issue (and 16th year) through changes in funding and partner organizations, not to mention changes in the field itself.
From one member of the OHPE editorial and management team of four, here is my view of those many Friday newsletters by the numbers: 4879 job postings, 2690 announcements, 3044 events, 3584 feature articles, 3 back-end databases, 2 internet hosts, 2 listservs, 6817 (current) subscribers, 3 THCU offices, 3 Health Nexus offices, 5 feature editors, 2 weekly editors, 3 farewell to me THCU parties, 1 farewell to THCU party, 3 home offices, 1 cottage office, 2 desk chairs, 1 desk, 3 laptops, 2 desktops, 1 masters, 2/3 PhD, 2 new nieces, 5 cats, 1 husband, 3 provinces, 1 state, 3 countries, and 1 houseboat.
Things immeasurable? PDFs converted, “Toronto, Ontario”s typed, spam deleted, improper colons removed, cups of tea consumed, and total number of health promoters informed.
I look forward to the next 800 issues and I hope you do, too.