Talks tackle delivery and costs of health care
Karen Palmer, 778.782.8593; ksp5@sfu.ca
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.3210; marianne_meadahl@sfu.ca
Strengthening how health care is delivered and financed in B.C. and Canada will be the focus of a conference at Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver campus at Harbour Centre March 12.
Sponsored by SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, the inaugural graduate student-led conference Affirming Equity: Strengthening Public Health Care Financing and Delivery will bring together students, researchers, health professionals and health care providers to discuss strengthening the equitable financing and delivery of public health care.
“We’re interested in making the connections between how broad policies and administrative decisions can impact equity in health care access and population outcomes,” says SFU faculty organizer Karen Palmer, a lecturer in health sciences and a health policy analyst.
“Given the constant discussion about privatization and profitization of health care in Canada we chose to focus on how the decisions we make might influence equity – to re-ground ourselves in the history and reasons why Canadians chose to support social health care in the first place.”
The conference will also complement and inform ongoing political and public discussions, “playing a counter-point to dominant politics revolving around health care, financing and delivery in B.C. and Canada,” adds Sarah Chown, a Master of Public Health graduate student and conference co-organizer.
Palmer and SFU health sciences colleagues John Calvert, Craig Janes and Malcolm Steinberg will help facilitate sessions on the roles of government and health care authorities, how community care should be financed and delivered, how gender equity can be promoted through financing and delivery systems and Canada’s role in promoting equitable global health financing and delivery.
Keynote speakers are Bob Evans, a professor at the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, and Andrew Coates, a practicing internist and physician activist who serves on the board of Physicians for a National Health Program (USA) and teaches at Albany Medical College (NY).