29th Annual Conference of IASP at Varanasi

 On Poverty, Health and Development
October 26-28 2007

IASP organized a three days annual conference at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi during 26-28 October 2007. The main theme of the conference was 'Poverty, Health and Development.' The sub-themes was:

1. Health, Nutrition and Environment.
2. Programmes and Policies of Population and Health
3. Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS
4. Urbanization and Migration
5. Poverty and Development
 

The conference was attended by the galaxy of researchers, demographers, programme managers, partner organizations, distinguish IASP members and the young researchers. Four eminent demographers Prof. K. Mahadevan, Prof. Asha Bhenda, Prof. Vatslala Narain and (Late) Prof. Sukumar Mukerji, were felicitated. Prof. Srinivasan Award for the year 2006-07 for best published paper in Demography India was given to two papers. One paper was on "Do home visits by health workers make a difference in service utilization? Finding from a longitudinal study in rural India" authored by Dr. R. K. Sinha, Dr. S.K. Mohanty, Dr. T.K. Roy and Dr. Michael Koenig. The other was entitled "Service Provision and contraceptive use related morbidity in Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala" authored by Dr. C.V. Sowmini and Dr. P. Sankara Sarma. Chandrasekharan was given to the best paper presented during conference.

Dr. Fred Arnold, Macro International, U.S.A. Delivered George Simmons Memorial Lecture on "Nutrition Landscape of India: Findings from the National family Health Surveys". The conference had seven plenary, twelve technical and three poster sessions. We are thankful to organizations the extended finacial support for organizing the conference, namely, MOHFW, ICMR, DST, ICSSR, CSIR, Constella Future Group, WHO-India, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNICEF, Planned International and the Banaras Hindu University. A historical joint meeting of the Board of Trustee and Executive Committee of the Association held on 25th October 2007 at the venue of the conference where 37 Life and 22 Annual members were admitted.