Why this conference
ECSM2027 brings together researchers, clinicians, policymakers, social workers, community practitioners, and patient advocates to share evidence, experience, and practical solutions on rehabilitation, equal access to healthcare, and the structural determinants of health.
Social medicine has always insisted that disease cannot be understood, let alone addressed, by reducing it to biology alone. Health and illness emerge from the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors — and from concrete arrangements of power, resources, and policy. The tradition is not only European: postcolonial and activist traditions from Latin America, Africa, and beyond have shaped the field just as deeply, reframing social medicine to include grassroots movements, community initiatives, and the link between health equity and ecological justice.
Addressing health inequity therefore requires the tools of many disciplines working together — sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, public health, law, the humanities, and frontline clinical and community practice. These groups rarely share a platform. ECSM2027 is a deliberate answer to that fragmentation: a working space where the full breadth of social medicine can be brought into dialogue.
The 2027 theme: Intervening for Health Equity
Health inequalities are not random. Who gets sick, who receives care, and who recovers is shaped by the conditions in which people live, work, and grow up. These differences are widely documented — and, in principle, preventable. Therefore this year's theme: Intervening for Health Equity reflects a deliberate step beyond critique alone. Inequities in health demand social, clinical, political, and collective responses.
Intervention takes many forms: research that names structural drivers of illness; clinical practice that reaches populations systematically failed by existing systems; community and grassroots initiatives that build care and solidarity; policy and institutional change; activist, educational, or creative work that reimagines healthier futures.
Conference tracks
Contributions and sessions are organised around three tracks:
1. Global and historical perspectives on social medicine How political economies, institutions, social movements, and systems of knowledge have shaped understandings of health, disease, and intervention across time and place. Histories of social medicine and public health, colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial health formations, transnational health governance, and comparative perspectives on care, expertise, and health intervention.
2. Structural and policy perspectives on social medicine How structural conditions and policy choices drive health outcomes, and how they can be changed. Health policy and its effects; welfare systems, housing, labour, and other structural determinants; work from those actively trying to influence or implement structural change, including policymakers, advocates, and activists. Both critical analyses of existing structures and visions for alternatives are welcome.
3. Interventions and grassroot actions — practices that address inequality Not all responses to health inequality emerge from healthcare systems or public institutions, and not all knowledge about what works lives in research papers. This track is for those doing something about inequality — through structured interventions, community organising, or the kind of locally rooted practice that no one planned but everyone needed. A football club running sessions for vulnerable teenagers belongs here as much as a formally evaluated intervention. We are particularly interested in work that bridges research and practice and shares honest lessons, including from what hasn't worked.