Adjunct Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada, Professor of Global Health Policy, School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, Durham University, Stockton-on-Tees, UK.
Can health promotion in Canada effectively respond to the challenge of reducing health inequities presented by the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health? Against a background of failure to take seriously issues of social structure, I focus in particular on treatments of stress and its effects on health, and on the destructive congruence of Canadian health promotion initiatives with the neoliberal "individualization" of responsibility for (ill) health. I suggest that the necessary reinvention of the health promotion enterprise is possible, but implausible.