Chapter II: The Preparatory Phase, August 1999 - June 2000.

In August 1999, an agreement was signed between the Interim President of ISEqH and the Argentinean Society for Equity in Health (SAES) with the purpose of designating SAES as the ISEqH Executive Secretariat to receive grants and to organize the Inaugural Conference and the First ISEqH Assembly.

After considering different alternatives and after receiving responses from a large number of individuals who had expressed interest in the Society and its inaugural meeting, as well as with support from the granting agencies, it was decided to hold the inaugural meeting in Havana Cuba on June 29-30, 2000.

During this year, the work of the Interim President, the Interim Secretary, and the Secretariat was totally devoted to making contacts and planning the meeting. Important technical support was received from the Cuban PAHO/WHO country office.

Five main lines of activities were undertaken:

the organization of the Scientific Conference, including specification of the agenda, solicitation and selection of papers and posters, preparation of documents, and printing and air mailing materials from Argentina to Cuba.
the allocation of fellowships to allow interested people who would not otherwise have been able to attend because of financial constraints, to participate at the conference.
the organization of the first ISEqH General Assembly.
the organization of pre-conference activities.
the definition and execution of a Conference budget and financial analysis.

1. The organization of the Conference

Due to the fact that there was no local organizing committee and no operating tour agency designated in Cuba, the secretariat located in Argentina requested and obtained the support of the PAHO/WHO representative in Cuba working as a liaison agent with the local authorities and the representatives of La Pradera Hotel, which was chosen as the venue for the Conference.

Although these administrative arrangements were successful in achieving control over operating costs, the small secretariat was heavily burdened with resolving travel and hotel issues.

For the relatively large number of expected USA participants, the intervention of the tour operator Marazul, located in the USA, was recommended as the means of arranging legal, travel, and hotel accommodations.

An ISEqH logo was designed. Working definitions, the draft Bylaws and Constitution, and other information concerning the Inaugural Conference were prepared and introduced onto the web.

The list of potential ISEqH members increased up to approximately 1,200 with a total of 700 considered as active potential members. Individuals were considered "active" if they replied to at least one e-mail. An electronic data base was developed that allowed a permanent on-line relationship with all prospective participants.

E-mail contacts were maintained with all interested individuals including information about participation in all conference activities and hotel and travel arrangements. Those who were unable to attend took advantage of this type of communication to manifest their support for and commitment to the ISEqH initiative and their desire to be involved in future activities.

A call for abstracts was circulated by e-mail in December 1999, and a hard copy was distributed to selected institutions by personal contacts.

A two-day agenda for the conference was organized.

a. Keynote speaker

After several consultations with informal advisors, this responsibility was offered to Dr. Sudhir Anand.

Sudhir Anand is Professor of Economics at Oxford University, and Fellow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. At Harvard, he has been collaborating with colleagues on a research initiative that explores the theory and measurement of health equity. He is trained in mathematics and economics, with a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University. Dr. Anand's research interests include inequality, poverty, and nutrition in developing countries; human development; population ethics; and health economics. He has written widely on the theory and measurement of economic inequality. Recently, he has worked with Amartya Sen on various aspects of human development, including an analysis of intra- and inter-generational equity that attempts to link present and future concerns for security thorough the concept of "sustainable human development", and the construction of the UNDP's gender-related development index (GDI) and Human Poverty Index (HPI). He is also working in the area of health economics, writing on the health implications of economic policies and a critique of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).

b. The organization of simultaneous sessions for scientific papers presentations and posters exhibitions

A total of 169 scientific abstracts were received. A small scientific committee was organized under the Presidency of Dr. Starfield with the purpose of selecting those abstracts most related to the Conference's main theme of equity in health.

Abstracts were classified into four categories: Policy, Pathways, Methods, and Special Populations. The following criteria were developed to rate them:

Relevance to Equity: 4 points
Quality of Method: 2 points
Clarity of Message: 2 points
Relevance to a Conference Theme: 2 points

The Scientific Committee selected a total score of 8 as the cut-off for acceptability for oral presentation.

The final selection identified a total of 72 abstracts for oral presentation and 60 for poster session. The oral presentations were distributed in three sets of four concurrent sessions in the morning and afternoon of the first day of the meeting and in the morning of the second day.

c. The organization of a writers’ workshop and a forum session to analyze scientific papers

The writers’ workshop was included as an agenda item as a result of a volunteer effort by Dr. John Hoey, editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, with the purpose of contributing to the development of good scientific practices reporting. (Dr. Anthony Zwi, of the journal Social Science and Medicine, had originally suggested this idea but was unable to attend the meeting on the chosen dates.)

The forum session was organized with the purpose of constructively discussing recently published papers on the subject of equity. A call for contributions resulted in two critiques which were presented and discussed in a designated session in the second afternoon of the meeting.

At the request of WHO, a working lunch session was organized on the first day to allow for the presentation of the very recently published WHO World Health Report. This first public presentation of the Report (except for press conferences) was given by Emmanuela Gakidou of WHO.

The second lunch session was devoted to the reading of "keynote vignettes". A total of eleven prestigious researchers were invited to contribute with their ideas and proposals to further research on equity in health and health systems.

d. The preparation of the documents

All documents for the Conference were prepared and sent by air to Cuba (total 250 copies each). These included booklets with abstracts, Constitution and Bylaws, Agendas, Keynote Vignettes, and a list of proposed names for the Executive Board, with their respective biosketches.

e. The allocation of fellowships

In order to facilitate the participation at the Conference of interested individuals from developing countries and following the specific intent of a part of the grant money that was received, a special fund was allocated to provide partial financial support.

In order to allocate such funds, the ISEqH Interim President and Secretariat developed and considered the following four different categories, ranked in order of priority.

Professionals from developing countries who submitted abstracts that were accepted for scientific sessions
Professionals from developing countries who presented abstracts for poster sessions
Professionals who were known to be active in working on equity issues in their developing countries
Professionals from developing countries who submitted a written statement explaining their interest in and commitment to work on equity in health.

In addition, money was allocated to postgraduate and graduate students who had expressed their interest in the field and offered to work in the organization of the Conference. Following these criteria, 25 fellowships were allocated, most of them to individuals from developing countries.

3. The organization of the first ISEqH General Assembly

As one of the objectives of the Conference was to finalize the organization of the ISEqH, the Conference agenda included the first ISEqH General Assembly.

A proposed Constitution and Bylaws were developed with volunteer advice from Barbara Holstein, a US lawyer.

An executive board member slate was proposed with the following names: Drs. Barbara Starfield (United States); José María Paganini (Argentina); Carme Borrell (Spain); Chee-Khoon Chan (Malaysia); Finn Diderichsen (Sweden); Jane Dixon (Australia); Philippa Howden-Chapman (New Zealand); Rene Loewenson (Zimbabwe); and Adam Oliver (United Kingdom).

4. The organization of pre-conference activities

With the agreement of the Cuban Ministry of Health and the coordination of the PAHO/WHO representative in Cuba, two days of pre-conference field activities were developed. On June 27, a visit to three policlinics of the Cuban health care services provided an orientation to the network of services oriented toward primary health care. On June 28, a visit to the International School of Medical Sciences was organized.

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Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI