High-level Conference on Health Equity – Accelerating Progress Towards Healthy and Prosperous Lives for all in the WHO European Region. Meeting report (2019)

Many countries, regions and communities across Europe have taken actions to reduce health gaps, which is a core objective of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Health 2020 and WHO’s Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019–2023. Progress in reducing health inequities nevertheless has been slow, and newly disadvantaged groups are emerging.

To make further progress, the WHO Regional Office for Europe convened a high-level conference on health equity hosted by the Ministry of Health of Slovenia in Ljubljana on 11–13 June 2019, of which this report provides a brief summary of presentations, discussions and parallel sessions. The conference took as a basic document the then soon to be published Health Equity Status Report (HESR).

The HESR stresses the importance of investing in policies and interventions that together will deliver five essential conditions for a healthy life:

• quality and affordable health services;
• income security and social protection;
• safe and affordable living conditions;
• social and human capital; and
• decent work and employment.

The high-level conference focused on putting forward practical solutions to reduce health inequities. It aimed to set the European action agenda on increasing equity in health for the next 10 years by considering three action goals: Achieve, Accelerate and Influence. Meeting participants also agreed the final text of the Ljubljana Statement on Health Equity, which is presented as an annex to this report.