Samantha Bradley Abstract Post-conflict communities consistently experience high rates of domestic and family violence (DFV) against women and children. An end to violence in the public sphere is widely seen to precipitate the escalation of violence in the private sphere. This paper presents the argument that protecting women and children from DFV should be an essential public policy goal in post-conflict communities. Furthermore, the imperative for placing DFV on the…
EDITORIAL Deepening the Relationship between Human Rights and the Social Determinants of Health: A Focus on Indivisibility and Power
Kristi Heather Kenyon, Lisa Forman, and Claire E. Brolan The social determinants of health and human rights describe where and how we live and thrive. They express our actual and optimal conditions of housing and nutrition; our social, cultural, and spiritual connections; our access to education, health, and social services; and our ability to be fully involved in our societies through expression, mobility, association, work, and engagement with the formal…
Human Subject Research: International and Regional Human Rights Standards
Andrés Constantin Abstract This article will place the discussion of human subject research within the larger context of human rights law, both at the international and regional level, and examine existing normative human rights frameworks that can be used to protect research subjects. The traditional approach has commonly focused on the ethical aspects of human subject research and little has been said about the implications of human experimentation on the…
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PERSPECTIVE Human Rights in Public Health: Deepening Engagement at a Critical Time
Benjamin Mason Meier, Dabney P. Evans, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Jessica M. Keralis, and Gabriel Armas-Cardona On behalf of the American Public Health Association’s Human Rights Forum This year marks the 70th anniversary of both the birth of human rights law through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the birth of global health governance through the World Health Organization (WHO). Over the past 70 years, human rights have developed…
A Meta-Narrative Literature Synthesis and Framework to Guide Future Evaluation of Legal Empowerment Interventions
Katherine Footer, Michael Windle, Laura Ferguson, Jordan Hatcher, Carrie Lyons, Emma Gorin, Anne L. Stangl, Steven Golub, Sofia Gruskin, and Stefan Baral Abstract Legal empowerment is increasingly recognized as a key approach for addressing socio-structural determinants of health and promoting the well-being and human rights of vulnerable populations. Legal empowerment seeks to increase people’s capacity to understand and use the law. However, limited consensus remains on the effectiveness of legal…
Human Rights and Fracking in England: The Role of the Oregon Permanent People’s Tribunal
Miriam R. Aczel and Karen E. Makuch The dictates of public conscience can become a recognized source of law and a tribunal emanating directly from the conscience of the people reflects an idea that is bound to grow. It is claimed that institutions derive their power from the people, but actually these two have moved further and further apart and only a major public initiative can try to build a…
PERSPECTIVE Tax and the Right to Health
Bernadette Ann-Marie O’Hare Introduction Human rights are enshrined in numerous international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, the right to health is limited by the principle of progressive realization, which has left loopholes allowing the deferment of fundamental human rights.[1] Many of these fundamental human rights—such as the rights…
Social Medicine in Practice: Realizing the American Indian and Alaska Native Right to Health
Lucas Trout, Corina Kramer, and Lois Fischer Abstract American Indians and Alaska Natives have long held a state-conferred right to health, yet Indigenous communities across the United States continue to experience significant health and health care disparities. In this paper we posit two contributing factors: socialization for scarcity in tribal health care, and a slowness among health workers and allied health and social scientists to make explicit and convincing linkages…
Using Health Committees to Promote Community Participation as a Social Determinant of the Right to Health: Lessons from Uganda and South Africa
Moses Mulumba, Leslie London, Juliana Nantaba, and Charles Ngwena Abstract Community participation is not only a human right in itself but an essential underlying determinant for realizing the right to health, since it enables communities to be active and informed participants in the creation of a responsive health system that serves them efficiently. As acknowledged by the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health, participatory processes are important in…
Engaging Human Rights Norms to Realize Universal Health Care in Massachusetts, USA
Gillian MacNaughton, Mariah McGill, April Jakubec, and Andjela Kaur Abstract Massachusetts is a national leader in health care, consistently ranking in the top five states in the United States. In 2006, however, only 86% of adults aged 19–64 had health insurance. That year, Governor Romney signed into law An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care. By 2017, over 96% of these adults were insured. The 2006 Massachusetts…