Disparities are probably the most important factor that causes ill health in India. People from more disadvantaged communities and who face discrimination in health care, have higher mortality rates and face premature deaths. They have poorer health status, more disease burden, and disabilities. Yet the field of medicine, teaches us very little about how to address inequities in health.

There are various structures in society that cause inequity, socioeconomic, gender, caste, tribes. Health inequalities are due to unequal distribution of power, income, material goods, living conditions and opportunities to education and jobs. People from different communities’ face discrimination in accessing health care. Discrimination not only affects access to health care. It has been recently recognised that discrimination can becomes biologically constituted as disease. The concept of embodiment highlights how social factors influence biological processes and affect peoples’ health. Social structures and discriminatory practices can become embodied. Thereby disparities in society can cause ill-health.

The term ‘structural violence’ is one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm’s way. These arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organisation of our social world. They are violent because they cause injury and ill-health. As physicians we are not trained to understand such social phenomena, nor to alter them.
This conference is to help health professionals to think about health disparities in the contexts that they work in. To understand the theoretical concepts related to equity in health, health disparities, embodiment, structural factors, social determinants, structural violence and barriers to accessing healthcare. How does disparities and discrimination become structured biologically into medical problems, morbidity, poor outcomes and death. What are models and approaches that we can learn from to address the problem of equity and health disparities. How do we apply these concepts in our clinical practice, education and research.

We hope that the conference would provide a forum for sharing of experiences, discussion, networking and advocacy in relation to equity in health.