Hello everyone!

There has been a lot of interest in the ‘Power, Politics and Global Health’ magazine collaboration between Medsin-UK and The Lancet Student which was announced a few weeks ago, and we want to encourage you all to keep sending us your ideas and article submissions! To inspire potential article ideas, here is the list of general conference topics:

Plenary 1: Politics

A pressing question for those in global health is how political systems impact on health and health equity. How do different national political systems approach the question of health? And which is most effective?

This plenary will also address the means by which these vastly different national systems integrate into the international systems of governance affecting the global health agenda.

This plenary will focus on the following questions:

• How political systems affect population health and equity
• Is democracy good for health?
• Do we need a global democracy?

Plenary 2 – Economics

The world is wealthier, but are we healthier? Is the market good for our health? This plenary will explore the powerful grip that economics has over health. The power of money will be exposed as we take a look at who controls global health aid.

Plenary 3 – Status, Inequality & Class

This plenary will focus on:

• The social determinants of health: deciphering status, inequality and health
• Globalisation and power: who wins and who loses?
• Gender, social justice and bring about change

Plenary 4 – Society and Health

This plenary will look at the sectors of society who set the global health agenda to consider the implications of the expanding roles of these organisations for democracy, legitimacy and accountability. It will look at:

• The role of the media in the formation of global health policy
• The role of faith-based organisations in global health funding, policy and delivery
• Impact and governance of campaigning NGOs.

There is an over-arching theme that will be addressed at the end of each plenary – ‘Empowering the Powerless’ – which may also be an opportunity for you to write articles which highlight examples of situations were the powerless have been empowered.

Thanks so much for all of your ideas and submissions so far!  We look forwarding to reading more in the coming weeks.

Christine and Sophie

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.