Health inequities are pervasive and a continuing challenge in the Pacific. Across the region, wide disparities in health delivery systems, great contrasts in the provision of health care in urban vs rural areas and inequalities of gender, age, class and identities intertwine to impact the vulnerability of individuals and groups to diseases and their ability to act in ways that favour their well-being and health. Our aim in this panel is to examine the manifold factors that shape inequality in health and illness in the Pacific. We especially seek to bring attention to dimensions of difference that, albeit crucial in the Pacific, are easily overlooked by approaches strictly concerned with commonly accepted axes of inequalities. These may include, for example, differences in social networks (e.g. having a relative who works at a health facility or not), in religious affiliation, in political ascendancy, in historical legacies (e.g. having grown up in a region affected by tribal fighting or not) and in access to information technologies. We welcome papers that explore these and other more specifically Pacific realities and how they intersect in complex and diverse ways with other forms of disparity to produce unique situations of health inequality.
Paper submissions are closed