The conference of the International Association of Health Policy (IAHPE) took place over 21-24 September 2023 in Thessaloniki, Greece. The theme of the conference was Capitalism, Pandemic and Public Health and brought together an international audience of activists, academics, and experts. 

Rossella De Falco, Program Officer on the Right to Health, presented GI-ESCR's work on the commercialisation of healthcare services and promoting rights-aligned public healthcare services at the panel ‘Healthcare Privatisation’ focusing on GI-ESCR's recent policy brief Healthcare Systems and the Commercialisation of Healthcare: A Glossary as well as a case study on access to healthcare services in Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel included case studies of Nigeria, India, Georgia, and Turkey, reflecting the limits of healthcare privatisation to deliver on human rights and public health goals.  

Moreover, Rossella De Falco also presented as an invited keynote speaker discussing how power imbalances influenced health inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic from a human rights perspective in the roundtable discussion COVID-19 and public health. The roundtable featured a panel of public health experts such as Ronard Labonté, Distinguished Research Chair in Globalization and Health Equity and Rob Wallace, evolutionary epidemiologist.  

This effort is part of our work to advance progressive interpretation of the right to health in the context of private actors across civil society and academia and disseminate our findings as widely as possible.  

The entire program of the conference is available here.  

Read more about our work on the right to health here.