The International Union for Health Promotion and Education, in collaboration with the Canadian Consortium for Health Promotion Research, and with support from the Public Health Agency of Canada, have formulated recommendations on priorities for action regarding the policies and system conditions necessary for sustainable and effective health promotion. The statement, launched in June in Vancouver at the IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education, and reproduced below, is the product of an international Project Advisory Group's reflections derived from a collection of commissioned field reports on renewing commitment to the path set out by the Ottawa Charter. The field reports themselves will be published in their entirety in a special issue of 'Promotion & Education', official journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education, in December 2007.