Report from the 3rd Calisia Conference on Family Health, Kalisz, Poland, 18-20 June 2023

CONFERENCE OUTLINE

The 3^rd World Conference on Family Health, which took place at Calisia University on 18-20 June 2023, built upon the deliberations initiated during two previous editions in 2019 [1] and 2021 [2]. This year the main conference theme was the “Status of public health in Poland”. The meeting was organized by the Institute – European Observatory of Health Inequalities at Calisia University and held under the honorary patronage of the Polish Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy and the Ministry of Health, with funding from the “Doskonała Nauka” Programme of the Ministry of Education and Science. During the Inaugural Ceremony, a letter to the partici­pants of the conference from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was read out, including the following words of support:
“Being aware of how important the health of citizens is, I would like to thank you for organizing this conference. (...) I believe that coming days will be a time of fruitful deliberations and inspiring talks. I am convinced that the conclusions and solutions developed here will be an important voice in the discussion on public health both in Poland and in the world”.
The Inaugural Ceremony also included the awarding of titles of Doctor Honoris Causa posthumously to two scholars who, in addition to their enormous academic contributions, also participated in previous editions of the Conference. In a letter from Przemysław Czarnek, Minister of Education and Science, provided words of support for the conference and the awarding of hono­rary titles:
“I would like to thank Your Magnificence for honouring the title of doctor honoris causa of the Calisia University posthumously to prof. Peter Boyle and dr. Mateusz Zatoński. I deeply believe that this symbolic ceremony will become a great opportunity to manifest the beauty of science, which was the passion of both: an internationally renowned epidemiologist and a world-renowned political scientist and health historian”.
The two-day meeting that followed focused on the evolution of population health in Poland with a particular focus on the current health recession. While substantial improvement in health was observed after the political and socio-economic transformation of the 1990s, this trend subsequently slowed and eventually halted. The stalled progress is clearly visible in recent trends towards decreasing life expectancy. Conference...


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