Establishing criteria and distributing conference grants for participants from the Global South: experiences from the Canadian Conference on Global Health 2024

The annual Canadian Conference on Global Health (CCGH) provides a platform for global health professionals and students from various sectors and disciplines to share knowledge and innovations in research, policy, and practice. However, known barriers disproportionately faced by participants from the Global South (PGS) often result in a lower representation, attendance, and participation of PGS in conferences such as the CCGH. Recognizing these barriers and to promote greater conference equity, the Canadian Association for Global Health (CAGH) with funding from the International Development Research Centre created a scholarship programme for PGS to provide full and partial funding to attend the CCGH. This paper details the six-step process used for the creation of the PGS scholarship criteria, as well as considerations for selecting recipients, methods for scoring applications, and processes for distributing the scholarships. The criteria and rubric designed provides a foundation for a reproducible resource that can be scaled up for other international conferences and can be applied to other groups underrepresented in conference settings.