In this post, guest blogger Maria Pawlowska discusses anti-abortion policies in Malta, drawing comparisons to her previous post on Poland and relating the harmful repercussions of these policies to the influence of the Catholic Church, social conservatism, and gender inequality.

In this guest post, Kate Thomson discusses the elimination of a national taskforce proven to reduce health inequalities in England. She asks whether the shift of responsibility to local authorities will render health equity concerns into unaffordable luxuries. Kate is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Health at Birmingham City University and is currently researching health reforms in the Russian Federation.

In this guest post, Ted Schrecker offers a commentary on how the 2011 World Conference on Social Determinants of Health might restore an otherwise ailing SDOH agenda. Ted is an associate Professor in the University of Ottawa’s Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, and a principal scientist at the University’s Institute of Population Health.

This guest post is the first in a series of posts which will critique the use of community participatory methods in public health. The author of this series, Lauri Andress, is a public health policy analyst at Andress & Associates where she advises US public health departments on policies, programs, and competencies related to health inequities. In this introductory piece, Lauri introduces the idea of community involvement and demonstrates its alignment with a social determinants of health perspective.

In this guest post, Maria Pawlowska looks at how the transition from socialism to democracy has impacted reproductive health in Poland. In the absence of both evidence-based sex education and access to safe and affordable contraceptives, Maria illustrates that the transition has effectively delegalized abortions, shifted the discourse surrounding reproductive rights to mirror the sentiments of the extreme political right, and ultimately placed the lives of Polish women hugely at risk. Maria is a healthcare analyst with a passion for reproductive health and gender issues in health care provision. Maria has a PhD from Cambridge, where she was a Gates scholar, and has worked with the Global Poverty Project and RESULTS UK.

In this guest post, Kate Jongbloed presents housing instability as social determinant of HIV/AIDS in Canada. Kate draws on others’ arguments that the absence of a national housing policy is to blame for fueling housing instability, with severe implications for the HIV epidemic.

Guest Blogger, Sebastián Peña  Fajuri, is a Chilean medical doctor and an associate editor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland where he is currently working on a ‘Health in All Policies’ book for the Global Conference on Health Promotion in Helsinki 2013. In a series of posts, Sebastián will explore the [...]

Guest blogger, David Phipps, is Director of Research Services and Knowledge Exchange at York University in Toronto, Canada.  York University developed the first knowledge mobilization unit that is fully integrated in the university’s research infrastructure.  Operating in partnership with the United Way of York Region (UWYR), York University is making its research and expertise accessible [...]

In a guest post, Craig Parker, discusses the right to health debate taking place in South Africa. Do we all really have the right to health and what does this right really mean? Over the last few weeks this debate has been a focus of a pro-business South African newspaper. Swinging between public health advocates [...]