Health equity in humanitarian emergencies: a role for evidence aid

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.