The 39th APACPH Conference with the theme “Lifestyle Related Disease Prevention: The Challenge for Nutrition and Public Health” was held from 21-25 November 2007 at Kagawa Nutrition University, Sakado City, Saitama prefecture, Japan.
On 22 November, the Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health held its General Assembly meeting at Kagawa Nutrition University (KNU) in Tokyo, Japan. There were over 30 member representatives from Asia and Australia.
Matters of discussion at this meeting included the new launch of the APACPH journal under Sage Publishing, mini-grants program, Cambodia Initiative program, the publicly available Resource Directory for APACPH and other updates and future developments of APACPH’s activities. The new President and President-Elect were also elected with Prof Wen-Ta Chiu (Taipei Medical University, Taiwan) and Prof Tomiko Hokama (University of the Ryukyus, Japan) taking on those roles respectively. In addition, 2 new members (BRAC University, Bangladesh and Tzu-Chi University, Taiwan) have also joined APACPH but only 1 was able to make it for the induction ceremony.
Following the General Assembly, the 39th APACPH Conference took place over the next 3 days (23-25 November) at KNU. Prof Yasuo Kagawa, Prof Atsuko Isoda and their team
successfully organised this conference for about 500 participants. The theme of the conference was ‘Lifestyle-related Diseases Prevention: The Challenge for Nutrition and Public Health’ and had over 15 different theme sessions and tracks for the conference.
Awards were also presented to Dr Hideo Shinozaki (Prof Kazue K McLaren Leadership Achivement Award) and Prof Yoshioko Kagawa (APACPH Public Health Recognition Award) for their contribution to public health in the region. A lively and varied program and spectacular social events and cultural performances made this a truly memorable conference and experience for the participants.
A series of pre-conference workshops for the Early Career Network, a group of emerging public health students and early career professionals was hosted by the National Institute of Public Health, Japan. It went successfully as participants learnt more about the use of qualitative research methods and field training.
Plans are now underway for the next General Assembly and Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam next year.
Minutes for the APACPH Executive Board Meeting and General Assembly Meeting will be posted shortly on the APACPH website – www.apacph.org – under the ‘Members Only’ section
