Equity in Health and Health Care Utilization Workshop
The challenges of inequalities in health and health care were examined at a CHEPA-sponsored workshop in December 2009 that brought together health economists, policymakers and scholars.
The one-and-a-half-day workshop entitled Equity in Health and Health Care Utilization, organized under the direction of CHEPA Associate Director Michel Grignon, aimed to build bridges between health economists involved in the measurement of equity and its causes, and health policy experts and policymakers.
About 30 people from Canada, the United States and Europe attended the workshop, at which a series of research papers dealing with a range of topics on gauging and achieving equity in health and the provision of health care were presented and discussed.
Keynote addresses were given by economist and political scientist John Roemer of Yale University, and Pedro Rosa Dias from The University of York in the United Kingdom.
Following is a list of the presentations, with links to the presenters’ slides:
• John Roemer, Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Professor of Political Science and Economics, Yale University;
A proposal for equalizing opportunities for health status using educational finance policy.
• Jeremiah Hurley, professor, Department of Economics, McMaster University;
Judgments regarding the fair division of goods: Information, good and sample effects in a health context.
• Erin Strumpf, assistant professor, Department of Economics, McGill University;
Racial/ethnic disparities in outpatient primary care: The role of physician-patient concordance.
• Yukiko Asada, assistant professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University;
Understanding different methodological approaches to measuring access to health care.
• George Kephart, associate professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University;
The role of proximity to death in needs-based approaches to health care.
• Patricia Stefanowska, health analyst, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care;
A discrete choice experiment investigating preferences for funding drugs used to treat orphan diseases.
• Michel Grignon, CHEPA associate director and associate professor, Department of Economics, McMaster University;
Immigration-related equity in health care utilization in Canada: Effort or circumstances?
• Pedro Rosa Dias, research fellow, University of York Centre for Health Economics, U.K.;
Applied research on equality of opportunity in health.
• Florence Jusot, senior research fellow, Institute for Research and Information in Health Economics, and associate professor, Université Paris Dauphine (LEGOS), Paris, France,
What contribution of circumstances and effort to health inequality in France.
Adalsteinn Brown, Assistant Deputy Minister, Health System Strategy Division for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, provided closing remarks at the workshop, along with John Roemer, on what is known about inequalities in health care use and social inequalities in health, and the pending issues.