PR Newswire - Pennsylvania

	    WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Plan International, a
leading children's development organization with offices in 66 countries
around the world, has been asked to deliver eight presentations on
children's health and well-being at the upcoming American Public Health
Association's (APHA) Annual Meeting & Exposition in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania on November 7-11, 2009.

    The American Public Health Association gathers organizations together
to address current and emerging health science, policy, and practice issues
in an effort to prevent disease and promote health globally. The Annual
Meeting is a premier event that is expected to attract more than 13,000
doctors, nurses, administrators, researchers, epidemiologists, and other
health professionals.

    Luis Tam, Plan USA's Senior Public Health Advisor, who organized Plan's
participation and submissions to APHA, says, "he's honored that so many of
Plan's experts have been given the opportunity to share their experience
and work at such a premier forum in the field of public health."

    Health experts from Plan USA and several of Plan's international
program offices, including Malawi, Indonesia, Senegal, Sierra Leone,
Cameroon, Colombia, and Uganda, will discuss the unique child-centered
methodology behind Plan's many successes in the areas of HIV/AIDS, Tsunami
recovery, malaria, nutrition, and water and sanitation.

    Plan works to integrate physical, mental and psychosocial elements of
health and development into each program. In Senegal, for example, in a
district where between 2006 and 2008 Plan implemented a community-based
strategy to reduce malaria-related deaths in children, and rates dropped
from 39% to 0%.

    In Sierra Leone, over 2,500 youth were trained through clubs, sport,
and street theater in how to better prevent malaria-related illness and
mortality in their communities. Because of their efforts, community-wide
participation in malaria prevention shot up from a very low percentage to
80%.

    "At Plan, we believe public health strategies that include the
participation of children and the entire community, have a greater chance
of yielding positive results, especially for the long term," says Tam.

    Another Plan project helped a largely illiterate community in Cameroon
create their own health system by using maps to represent individual
households. Community members were better able to track existing health
issues, monitor the progress, and take steps to solve the problems.

    Founded more than 70 years ago, Plan is a child-centered nonprofit with
no religious or political affiliations. Plan works in 48 developing
countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas, empowering millions of
children, families, and communities to lift themselves out of poverty using
methods that are innovative, cost-effective, and sustainable.