Editorial - Is health promotion in Canada, or anywhere else, different from Australia?

Abstract

Last month, I was at a health promotion conference in Europe and overheard a remark at dinner. The conversation seemed to be about how other countries ?do? health promotion. Pricking up my ears at the word ?Australia?, the remark was not about the quality of our work, but our attitude towards it. I cannot get the word they used right here, but the phrase that comes to my mind in trying to capture the sentiment is one we used to hear a lot last century: ?cultural cringe?. Put more bluntly, according to my dinner companions, Australia (and a couple of other countries, I gather) don?t seem to recognise that they are first class when it comes to health promotion. They think that the rest of the world must be ahead of them. Funny that. Yes, it?s silly. And then the conversation moved to something else.