Chapter II: Background

From Havana to Toronto - Preparatory Phase

Many things have been accomplished since the inaugural meeting in Havana, Cuba in June 2000. The International Society for Equity in Health has consolidated, and is now a growing and thriving 2-year old organization.

Establishment of a permanent secretariat in Toronto

We now have a functioning and active secretariat, located at the University of Toronto, Canada. (The first year, the office of the President functioned as the secretariat.) The International's Secretariat became operational in the fall of 2001 and has successfully managed the Society since then - and planned this 2002 international meeting.

We have two staff persons: Monica Riutort is the Executive Director and Leslie Nuñez, the Communication Coordinator.

Consolidation of an Executive Board

The Executive Board has carried out its advisory and decision-making functions in a timely manner, allowing for smooth progress on various activities. The 3-person Executive Committee, composed of the President (Barbara Starfield), Secretary (Jane Dixon), and Treasurer (Adam Oliver), has functioned extremely well and made speedy decisions when necessary.

Virtually all communications, except for a few essential faxes, phone calls, and express mailings, were accomplished through electronic communication. Apart from daily management functions, this also included newsletters, other mailings to members and interested persons, and the nominations process.

Development of Communication with members

Three Newsletters were distributed: March 2001, September 2001 and March 2002. These documents chronicled the activities of the Society. All were sent to members and interested others, as well as published on several list-serves and on the Society's WEBsite. All engendered positive comments from members and a considerable number of requests for information about the Society and about membership.

An upcoming issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, to be published this summer, will carry several papers presented at the Havana meeting, as well as the keynote address by Sudhir Anand, and an accompanying editorial written by Dr. Starfield (then ISEqH President).

The ISEqH WEBsite is regularly updated: it contains the Constitution and Bylaws, working definitions, the report of the inaugural meeting, information about membership, information about the Toronto meeting and additional information about the activities of the Society. The ISEqH has developed a linkage with the Department of Public Health at Erasmus University, which has a Documentation Center for Socio-economic Inequalities in Health. As a result of activities of the ISEqH, and through the Pan American Health Organization, the bibliography will be translated from its English version into Spanish and Portuguese and made widely available to members of the ISEqH and others. Negotiations are currently underway with colleagues from Australia, to further expand dissemination of this work.

Development of working definitions

The ISEqH has developed a set of working definitions of Equity in Health and Equity in Health Services. These are posted on the WEBsite and have been cited in several published articles.

Planning for the 2nd International Conference

For the better part of 2001 and from January to June 2002, the Society has been occupied with planning for the 2nd International Conference in Toronto.

Conference Management

The conference was managed from the office of ISEqH in Toronto. In February 2002 a conference coordinator was hired to take care of site logistics, special events, catering, travel, accommodation and post-conference activities. The conference coordinator also supervised the production and printing of major conference documents and the conference participant kit.

A critical path was developed in June 2001 including staff allocations, conference budget, promotion strategies, and development of an agenda, special events, security, international travelling arrangement, catering and hotels. The critical path was revised and adjusted in January 2002. This was the guiding tool for the conference coordination team and the volunteer committee.

A call for abstracts and a call for subsidies and a preliminary agenda were developed and circulated by e-mail in December 2001. The WEBsite was translated into French and English, including the call for abstracts. The deadline for accepting abstracts and requests for subsidies was January 28, 2002.

A committee, using pre-set criteria, reviewed 210 abstracts. The top group of 100 abstracts was chosen for oral presentation at this meeting. The resulting selection included presentations from people from over 50 countries, on topics related to equity policy, methods, pathways, evaluation and special populations. This process, which was established for the meeting in Havana, worked well, and we recommend its continuation for future meetings.

The University of Toronto contacted all Canadian Embassies for countries with representatives at the conference. Information regarding the conference was sent to all of them. (Only one participant was refused a Canadian Visa.)

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Chapter I
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI