For the past several years the global health community has been 
expressing concern over the proposed creation of global top level domain 
names (gTLDs) linked to health and wellness. There have been editorials 
in the Lancet British medical journal and elsewhere, and significant 
effort to stop the awarding of the .health and similar gTLD strings. 
(.com, .net, .edu are examples of gTLD strings. ICANN (icann.org) has 
pending approval for the creation of .health and it has been delayed in 
part because of concern on the part of national governments.

Within I can there is a committee called the Governmental Advisory 
Committee (GAC), made of of representatives of three-quarters of the 
countries in the world and they have yet to give their advice to ICANN 
on .health and similar health related strings. I have been asked by 
those involved in Health Information for All 2015 ( 
http://www.hifa2015.org/ ) to provide information so that individuals 
and organizations can express their concerns around the awarding of the 
gTLD .health to private interests. (If you need further information an 
online search using .health and dothealth will produce a wealth of 
information).

For those of you, individually or as organizations, who are interested 
in expressing your concerns to your national government and your 
governments member of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, here is 
the link to the current list of national GAC contacts, with email 
addresses etc.

I strongly advise national stakeholders to engage their national GAC 
representatives and associated government ministries with your concerns 
about .health and other health-related gTLDs being considered by ICANN. 
A dialogue at that level is very important. Here is the link to the GAC 
representative information.
https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/GAC+Representatives ( I also 
have a 7meg .PDF of the list available on request).

If you are going to contact your GAC representative I would suggest that 
(a) you target only those GAC representatives where you or your 
organization have a presence. A general spam-like email barrage to other 
GAC members would be counter productive.

Second, I would appreciate it if you could cc: email everything you send 
to your GAC members to me at the following email box: *[log in to unmask]* 
I will take the emails and using something like openstreetmap draw a 
picture of which countries engaged in email with their GAC 
representative, and how many representations were made, both as 
individuals and as organizations.  Your information will be kept 
confidential.

To recount:

List at      : https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/GAC+Representatives

cceMail: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Sam Lanfranco, Chair
ICANN/NPOC Public Policy Committee

Access CANCHID archives at: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/canchid.html
plus CANCHID subscription management. CANCHID is a joint service of the Canadian Society for International Health < http:www.csih.org > and the Distributed Knowledge Project (York University). Queries to Sam Lanfranco <[log in to unmask]>