The first meeting of the Health Inequality Network was held September 15–16, 2011, at the University of Chicago.

Thursday's working meeting was designed to allow the network members to deepen the knowledge of each other's work. Members began to work toward the development of a synergistic approach to understanding the evolution of health disparities over the lifecourse and across generations, integrating frontier approaches in different disciplines.

Friday's workshop brought together researchers at the frontier of their fields to confront and start integrating interdisciplinary approaches to advance our knowledge on the developmental origins of health and aging, and to set priorities for future research agendas. The workshop explored the potential synergies and to combine insights from the biological and the medical sciences, together with recent advances in genetic analysis and rigorous statistical modeling, to advance our understanding of important issues in the field.