Roma health mediation in Romania

This paper was commissioned by the WHO Regional Office for Europe and prepared by the Roma Centre for Social Intervention and Studies (Romani CRISS), Romania. The case study was produced to inform a resource package for health professionals to be used in multicountry capacity-building events to promote the reorientation of strategies, programmes and activities related to Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 (child and maternal health) for greater health equity, with an explicit but not exclusive focus on the Roma population.

The case study uses secondary data (research reports, evaluation reports, legislation and data in the Romani CRISS archives) to provide a critical overview of the Roma health mediation programme in Romania. It discusses the social and political context in which the programme was developed, the general characteristics of the mediation and the lessons learnt after 10 years of implementation.