Summary of July 2004 Roma Health Workshop

The Roma Health Workshop was a joint initiative by OSI and the World Bank, suggested during the first meeting of the International Steering Committee for the Decade of Roma Inclusion. During this meeting four broad areas of priority for the Decade were adopted—education, health, employment, and housing—around which countries will adopt action plans identifying goals, relevant targets and suitable indicators to monitor progress. These plans should build on and improve countries’ existing national strategies for Roma as well as incorporate innovative strategies that leverage on-going activities in the other sectors.

The Health Workshop, held July 21-22, 2004 in Budapest, was the third in a series of four meetings to assist countries in identifying and developing goals for each of the program areas. Roma and non-Roma Government representatives and experts participated from Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia.

The purpose of the workshop was to assist countries in formalizing the health goals, targets and indicators for the Decade Action Plans, which will be finalized in October 2004. The workshop provided a forum for country teams to critically examine current proposed plans and approaches in order to most effectively address a broad spectrum of social determinants of health.

This report provides an overview of the workshop and highlights key points. Each country gave a presentation of their proposed health goals, targets and indicators. These presentations along with presentations by the individual speakers are available on the World Bank website at www.worldbank.org/roma.

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