Health Equity in the SDG Era: Perspectives from South East Asia

Description

Worldwide concern over disparity and inequities resulted in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) commitment to "leave no one behind." The field of health equity research, with long origins in movements for social justice and health for all, is now increasingly established the world over. Progress on understanding health inequities and tackling them in a holistic and sustained fashion, however, has been uneven. Quite often, across regions, the lowest hanging fruit in tackling inequity have been chosen over more comprehensive, difficult, and participatory processes. Despite sizeable social progress in the post-colonial period for a number of countries in the South East Asia region, the high burden of maternal and child mortality is joined by drivers of climate degradation, epidemiological transitions leading to heightened burdens of non-communicable diseases, challenges of over and under nutrition, and health systems that, in many cases, are chronically underfunded. The challenges of understanding and addressing health equity are clearly large, and those who have been at the front lines of tackling these thorny issues may have some insights on what has worked and what has not on the national and even regional scale.

The South East Asia Region of the IWG, in collaboration with the George Institute for Global Health, India, will be delving into a discussion on health equity in the SDG era mediated by reflections and perspectives across South East Asia during IWG's 6th Global Lecture Series. With eminent panelists from diverse contexts in the domain of health equity, the presentations will bring diverse national experiences on health equity – research, policy, and capacity-building initiatives – from across the region.