The aim of this meeting, jointly convened by the Alliance for Health for Policy and Systems Research, the WHO Department of Social Determinants of Health and Boston University’s School of Public Health, is to establish an action-oriented research and learning agenda to reduce health inequities through action on social determinants.
Despite considerable evidence documenting the profound influence of social determinants on health equity, progress on health inequities has been disappointing, with insufficient policy and implementation action. Interlinked crises including the COVID-19 pandemic have further exacerbated and exemplified the challenge – but also present an unprecedented opportunity to refocus, revitalize and reconsider efforts to improve health equity, creating space to re-think how knowledge for equity is produced to better inform and shape policy and implementation.
The objectives of this meeting are:
• To consider types of research and knowledge and topics that have been underexamined in previous learning efforts on health equity and social determinants;
• To identify innovative methods and ways of knowing that could be employed for research and learning that can facilitate action on health equity; and
• To reimagine who is involved in the production of knowledge to improve health equity, who decides how this knowledge is produced and used, who legitimizes what action is taken based on knowledge produced, and why and how such knowledge is ultimately acted upon.
