Public health actions in companies

At the Australian Security Conference in 2011 Mr. KONKOLEWSKY stressed the need to prevail in conceiving global prevention. This reaffirmation leads to rethinking the relationship between Public Health and Occupational Health, formerly addressed separately because of their respective traditions and funding arrangements. Because of this, we must take note of the complexity of contemporary societies and their need to involve actors outside the traditional world of Health in order to reach target populations and especially professionals, and mobilize material resources. Among these potential participants lays the issue of the place and role played by the company. The origin is the text of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in 1977, which also places the preservation of health on the place of work. Promoting health aims to provide information so that people concerned are able to choose the right behaviour having an impact on their lives and could therefore determine or modify health in their individual and professional environment. If the need for reconciliation between Public Health and the Company are indispensable, it is nevertheless true that concrete measures undertaken are still  limited although progressing. None is ignorant of the fight against physical inactivity organized on a large scale in Asia, nor of the achievements of several French and Canadian companies, nor of the campaigns led by private insurers in United States. The European Network for the Promotion of Health in the workplace, established in 1996 with support from WHO and the European Occupational Safety and Health Agency has the motto “healthy employees in healthy structures”.  In addition, the government has taken steps assigning responsibilities to companies in public health. We must go further and the ways of improvement lead to making efforts to reduce the gaps between public health and occupational health and remind the mutual interests of social partners.