The Fifth Workshop on Cutting Edge Research Methods in Health Inequities was held at Visthar, Bangalore on 25-29 November 2019. The workshop featured attendees from all over India and was sponsored by the Health Equity Action Lab @ The George Institute for Global Health, Azim Premji University, and the Health Equity Network India.
Throughout the workshop, participants were encouraged to collaborate and think critically about the grand challenges of public health of the present moment. Thanks to the multifaceted backgrounds of the participants—who came from diverse occupations, demographics, and lived experiences—the discussions were never straightforward. 22 participants from around India attended the workshop. 10 resource persons from universities, NGOs, and public health organizations around the country presented over the five days.
The workshop began with a day of introductions and basic concepts. Attendees learned about power dynamics through a power walk and finished the day with introductory lectures on intersectionality and concepts and frameworks for health equity research. The following day saw the introduction of specific research methods. Each talk was specially designed not to introduce broad brushstrokes of complex methods, but to illustrate the unique strengths and weaknesses of each research method (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods), based on the research experiences of the respective lecturer. The content of these presentations is summarized in the report below and available in pdf form (accessible by scrolling down and clicking “presentations”). The final part of the workshop consisted of group-work. All attendees were divided into five groups, each of which was assigned a peer reviewed paper detailing a public health study (with an equity focus). Each group presented (in creative ways) the content of their paper, highlighting concepts learned in the course of the workshop.
We would like to highlight the case study presenters whose groundbreaking work served as the foundation for thought-provoking discussions during the workshop:
We thank Azim Premji University, Health Equity Network India, and the Health Equity Action Lab @ The George Institute for Global Health for their support of the workshop and look forward to hosting the sixth iteration in 2020.
For questions, please contact us at heni@iphindia.org.