Prolepsis was represented three times at the «20th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion»

Two European projects planned and implemented by Prolepsis were presented at the 20th International Conference on Health Promotion organized by the International Union for Health Promotion and Education in Geneva from the 11th to the 15th of July 2010.

Ms Pania Karnaki, Health Promotion Specialist, presented the project “Guidelines for the prevention of obesity at the workplace – the GPOW project” which was implemented by Prolepsis in cooperation with other scientific organizations from across the EU. Ms Karnaki discussed occupational obesogenic factors which contribute to obesity among employees of different occupational sectors. Modern workplaces have become increasingly obesogenic both because of the changing nature of work with more sedentary type jobs even in the industry and manufacturing sectors and because of working conditions such as overtime or shift work. Finally, evidence based guidelines for the prevention of obesity at the workplace were discussed as they were developed for the GPOW project.

Environmental and occupational risks that agricultural and fishery workers are faced with was the topic of the second presentation made by Ms Pania Karnaki. The paper was titled “Development of public health indicators for reporting environmental and occupational risks related to agriculture and fishery, DIRERAF”.  Ms Karnaki presented this European project in which Prolepsis was an associate partner and was implemented from 2004 to 2008. Agriculture and fishery are considered two of the most dangerous occupations in terms of reported accidents and fatalities. Evidence of this was presented and factors related to physical, ergonomic, chemical, biological and psychosocial exposures were discussed. The presentation also focused on the importance of developing a set of indicators so as to allow a European wide system for reporting occupational related accidents and other socioeconomic and demographic criteria. These indicators are important for the long term monitoring of risks and for the evaluation of the effectiveness of related policies and practices. 

Finally during the special session titled “Meet with the authors” Ms Pania Karnaki presented a book tilted “Promoting Health for Working Women” (Springer Publication -2008 ISBN: 978-0-387-73037-0). Professor Linos, the president of Prolepsis, is not only among the main authors of the book but is along with professor Kirch the editor of this publication. Ms Karnaki, who is also an author, presented the book which provides a detailed account about the health issues that working women are mostly faced with and describes evidence based workplace health promotion and prevention activities to tackle these problems.