Discussion: Health Promotion & PPIE

A decade ago, Department of Health Promotions, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka (RUSL) introduced a novel approach to work with and by people to improve their own health, which is now known as ‘Community Based Health Promotion Approach’.  In that, members of the general public are empowered to initiate and execute interventions in their own communities, allowing them to claim the ownership of the process. Department of Health Promotions facilitates the process and helps to improve capacities and skills of the communities.

Speaking at the inauguration of the PPIE collaboration, Vice Chancellor of the RUSL Dr. B. A. Karunaratne, stated that RUSL focuses on excelling in multidisciplinary research which would bring direct benefits to the Sri Lankan community and therefore, would like to explore the new frontiers promoting the quality of research including PPIE.  Prof. Diyanath Samarasinghe, Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Sriyani Wickramasinghe , Dean, Faculty of Allied Sciences, RUSL, Prof. Athula Sumathipala , Keele University, Dr. Godwin Kodituwakkau, Chairman, IRD and academic staff of IRD and RUSL also attended the meeting.

Discussion: Health Promotion & PPIE
The final event of the day was a discussion on Health Promotion and PPIE which was chaired by Prof. Diyanath Samarasinghe and Prof. Athula Sumathipala. The discussion was extremely productive as lay community members, students and the visitors expressed their views and experiences.