Registration for the conference is now closed.

This conference follows a very successful meeting in Hamilton in 2006, which led to a major programme of activities now impacting through all Wonca regions. These include the HER statement, ’10 Steps to Gender Equity in Health’, modification of Wonca bylaws and regulations for gender equity, and development of a position paper on ways in which
Wonca can improve gender equity in health. The U.K. meeting will consider the next steps, in particular how to ensure regional engagement with our Working Party and its aims, the needs of younger women family physicians, and detailed planning for Wonca 2010 in Cancun.

The aims of our Working Party are to work through Wonca to improve the health of women by:

• enabling family doctors worldwide to meet their full potential
• removing institutionalized gender barriers
• changing gender-based values and habits that support systematic discrimination in the profession, and
• focusing attention on women’s and girls’ health.
  

The aims of the Wonca Working Party meeting in 2009 are:

• Develop leadership potential in family medicine, especially among women doctors
• Build on strategic goals already set in place which will impact on clinical, training and research priorities in women and children’s health
• Plan strategic goals for the next 3 years which relate to working with higher education structures and family medicine organisations to improve capacity for family medicine
• Encourage people early in their careers to develop their academic and leadership
• potential for service and scholarship, especially through Wonca.
  

We believe that institutional transformation of Wonca and its member organizations, as well as personal change through the empowerment of our members, can act as catalysts to wider systemic changes in home countries. This meeting will enable us to align actions in all areas with these aims and to confirm and develop our action plan to address this through our organizations and networks, as well as through websites and published materials.

UEA is a modern university standing in its own greenfields in the beautiful and ancient city of Norwich. It is 1.5 hours from London, and has its own airport linked to Amsterdam by KLM. We can guarantee a warm welcome, a strong intellectual and collegial workshop, and a really pleasurable social programme. We are looking forward to the event and hope to hear that you can attend.

If you have any questions, please contact Amanda Howe, Chair, Wonca Working Party Women and Family Medicine & Professor of Primary Care, UEA at Amanda.Howe@uea.ac.uk