The Fifth International Conference of the International Society for Equity in Health will be hosted by the Greek School of Public Health in Crete from 9-11 June 2009. It will bring together, researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and others concerned with equity in health to develop and international health agenda for governments, universities and organisations all over the world. The theme is ‘Social and Societal Influences on Equity in Health’. Abstracts should ideally reflect a multidisciplinary conceptualisation of health equity, analyse or compare (rather than just describe), address issues of generalisability of findings beyond the particular population studied, include and compare different age groups and both genders, and address access/utilisation/appropriateness of health services across populations.
Jobs and Announcements
The Canada Gairdner Global Health Award is directed at health issues pertaining to developing countries. It recognises those who have made major scientific advances in basic science, clinical science, population health or environmental health. These advances must have, or have potential to make a significant impact on health outcomes in the developing world. Nominations for leadership and administration, however outstanding, do not fall within the parameters of this award. The long-term goal of this prize is to reward and stimulate members of the global scientific and medical community to undertake research that will lead to advances valuable to the health of nations. The Global Health Award consists of $100,000 (Canadian), a framed certificate with appropriate citation and a specially designed sculpture.
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), and the Open Society Institute’s (OSI) Public Health Programme are requesting proposals from coalitions of women’s rights and HIV/AIDS organisations in southern Africa that wish to develop proposals for submission to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria addressing the specific vulnerabilities of women and girls. A detailed proposal must be submitted to the Global Fund that outlines and estimates costs for specific, evidence-based interventions to improve women's and girls' access to health treatment, educate them about HIV and AIDS, meet their sexual and reproductive health needs and promote their human rights.
Registration for activities proposed for the World Social Forum (WSF) 2009 ended on 21 November and more than 2,400 activities were registered by organisations and movements from 60 countries. Now it's time to start convergences and merging among the participant organisations. The WSF is a space for exchange and strengthening of alternatives built by networks and movements from all over the world, so it's very important that all the initiatives and organisations try to build alliances. If you have registered for the Forum, it's strongly recommended that you check the list of activities proposed by other organisations before you confirm your activity (18 December) to try to establish contacts to unify activities or to build a common programme with similar initiatives.
The Lancet, together with the Geneva-based Global Forum for Health Research, has announced the winners of the 2008 essay competition, Young Voices in Research for Health. The theme of this year’s contest was research for climate change and health. Essayists were asked to devise research questions on the topic as it applies to vulnerable populations around the world. Almost 300 entries were submitted, from 66 countries. A shortlist of 42 was chosen by a team of judges from the Global Forum and The Lancet. Six winners were selected from the shortlist: Enrique Falceto de Barros (Brazil), Philippa Bird (UK), Lester Sam Geroy (Philippines), Rhona Mijumbi (Uganda), Marame Ndour (Senegal), and Charles Salmen (USA).
This award celebrates the work of an individual, organisation or initiative that has shown outstanding vision and impact in improving healthcare in the developing world. Only work that has been completed or published after 1 January 2007, may be entered. You are able to enter in more than one category. The closing date for entries is 12pm, Friday 19 December 2008. The expert panel of judges will be looking for the individual, organisation or initiative that has most demonstrated. To enter the Global Leadership award, you will need to complete an entry form at the above website.
Significant human and financial resources have been invested worldwide in the collection of population, facility and community-based data. However, this information is often not used by key stakeholders to effectively inform policy and programmatic decision-making. As a result, many health systems fail to fully link evidence to decisions and suffer from a decreased ability to respond to priority needs at all levels of the health system. In an effort to strengthen the links between data and decision making, MEASURE Evaluation, the Health Metrics Network, and the East, Central and Southern African Health Community (ECSA) are co-organizing a meeting January 28-29, 2009 in Arusha, Tanzania with the objectives of sharing successful experiences in using health data to improve programs and policies. Proven approaches for improving the use of data, common challenges to data use and key priorities for creating a culture of evidence-based decision making will be shared in this two day, interactive meeting. The meeting will include plenary presentation, group discussion and break-out learning sessions. In addition to the symposium, a skills building session in approaches and tools to facilitate data use will be held on January 30.
The Seventh World Congress on Health Economics will be taking place in Beijing 12-15th July 2009 on the theme 'Harmonizing Health and Economics'. Submission of abstracts and session proposals is open until 15 November 2008. This forum is accepting an increasing proportion of abstracts from low and middle income countries. More information about the topics and pre-congress symposiums is available on the website.
The Wellcome Trust and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research recognise the importance of using health research evidence in policymaking. This joint call for proposals is focused on low income countries and intends to build much needed capacity to strengthen links between research and policy making. Proposals are invited from groups based in low income countries to: Develop and implement innovative interventions that enhance policy maker capacity and/or civil society capacity to employ health policy and systems research evidence in policy making and policy dialogue; and conduct rigorous evaluations of the strategies employed. All proposals must address both of these objectives. Brief expressions of interest should be submitted to the Alliance by 16 January 2009.
The HIV Clinical Group at Pretoria University, in conjunction with PIJIP and WCL clinic students, is working to prepare and garner widespread NGO support for a submission before the African Commission during its meeting in Abuja, Nigeria from 10–24 November. This submission will call upon the African Commission to adopt an interpretation of the right to health under the African Charter, which mirrors the one provided by General Comment 14 to the ICESCR, specifically recognising that access to medicines is a crucial component to the right to health. Furthermore, upon recognising that the right to health includes the components of accessibility, availability, acceptability, and good quality of medicines, the submission will call upon the African Commission, in the future, to use these standards as a means to uniformly monitor state's compliance with the right to health.