Public health rallies around call for health equity at APHA 2018

Health equity took center stage at APHA’s 2018 Annual Meeting and Expo in November, with public health leaders making passionate calls to end the injustices and inequalities that lead to poorer health and shorter lives.

“Now is the time for us to go to work,” said APHA member David Williams, PhD, MPH, MA, a professor and disparities researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and creator of the Everyday Discrimination Scale, during his keynote address at the meeting’s opening session on Sunday, Nov. 11, at the San Diego Convention Center.

The opening session officially kicked off APHA 2018, which welcomed about 13,000 public health practitioners, scientists, advocates, students, educators and supporters to Southern California for five days of science, strategizing, networking and celebration. With an Annual Meeting theme of “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Health Equity Now,” many of the meeting’s hundreds of scientific and poster sessions focused on documenting health inequities and their contributors and sharing lessons from community-based interventions. Equity-focused sessions ran the gamut, from reproductive justice and gun violence to fair housing laws and immigrant health.

Continue reading this story from the January 2019 issue of The Nation' Health.