title: Health equity in humanitarian emergencies: a role for evidence aid.
abstract: Humanitarian emergencies require a range of planned and coordinated actions: security, healthcare, and, as this article highlights, health equity responses. Health equity is an evidence-based science that aims to address unfair and unjust health inequality outcomes. New approaches are using health equity to guide the development of community programs, equity methods are being used to identify disadvantaged groups that may face health inequities in a humanitarian emergency, and equity is being used to prevent unintended harms and consequences in interventions. Limitations to health equity approaches include acquiring sufficient data to make equity interpretations, integrating disadvantage populations in to the equity approach, and ensuring buy-in from decision-makers. This article uses examples from World Health Organization, Refugee Health Guidelines and Health Impact Assessment to demonstrate the emerging role for health equity in humanitarian emergencies. It is based on a presentation at the Evidence Aid Symposium, on 20 September 2014, at Hyderabad, India.
authors.affiliation: Bruyère Research Institute and Campbell and Cochrane Collaborations Equity Methods Group, Departments of Family Medicine and Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pottie
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D004190:Disasters; D004630:Emergencies; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D014943:Global Health; D000069576:Health Equity / Q000458:organization & administration*; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006801:Humans
keywords: Evidence aid; health equity; humanitarian emergencies