Rani Bang and Abhay Bang founded and jointly manage the Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health(SEARCH), a non-governmental organization that provides community-based health care in 150 villages in Gadchiroli, a remote rural district in Maharashtra, India. They have been instrumental in identifying and addressing, with community participation, important public health problems that are of concern to the community they serve. Their work also involves the conduct of research and the design and implementation of health programmes that are acceptable at community level. Their activities – addressing gynaecological morbidity in rural women, pneumonia in children and neonatal care in villages for example – have been recognized in national and international public health agendas. Drs Rani and Abhay Bang are members of India's National Commission of Population and have received numerous awards including the Gold Medal from the Indian Council of Medical Research, the Mahatma Gandhi Award for humanitarian service and three literarey awards. Drs Rani Barn and Abhay Bang received their medical education (MD) in India and a masters in public health from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.

Aysen Bulut is Head of the Department of Family Health, Institute of Child Health, Istanbul University, Turkey. After graduating from medical school at Hacettepe University, Ankara, in 1976, she specialized in public health. She received a diploma in population research from the Sociology Department of Exeter University, UK in 1984. She became a professor in 1996 and has worked extensively in the areas of quality of care in reproductive health, measurement and evaluation of health interventions, medical education and sexual education for youth in Turkey. She has also served as a consultant in Swaziland, Jordan, The Sultanate of Omanand Azarbaijan.