Integrating Poverty and Gender Into Health Programmes

Book excerpt: Although poverty and gender significantly influence health and socio-economic development, health professionals are not always adequately prepared to address such issues in their work. This publication, one of a set of modules intended for use in pre-service and in-service training of health professionals in the Western Pacific Region, focuses on the inter-relationship between poverty and health, including definitions of poverty and its multiple dimensions; indicators of poverty including methods of determining the prevalence of poverty and inequality within a community; how the health care system can address issues of poverty, with a special focus on low-income women and those from other marginalised or vulnerable groups.