Category: Volume 23 Number 2

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 121-138  |  PDF Chuan-Feng Wu Abstract Researchers and global policy makers are increasingly documenting negative health impacts from climate change, raising concerns for realizing the right to health. Importantly, courts have held that anthropogenic activities affecting climate may threaten a population’s standard of health and compromise its inviolable right to health. However, legal hurdles—such as the fragmentation of climate change and human rights laws and…

Continue reading “Challenges to Protecting the Right to Health under the Climate Change Regime”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 139-151  |  PDF Thalia Viveros-Uehara Abstract Given that the health-related impacts of climate change in Latin America disproportionately affect the most marginalized sections of the population, there is a need to enhance countries’ adaptive capacity through improved health systems. Though public health institutions have delineated guidelines to enhance health care systems’ preparedness for climate change, embedding a human rights perspective in their translation into laws…

Continue reading “Health Care in a Changing Climate: A Review of Climate Change Laws and National Adaptation Plans in Latin America”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 153-165  |  PDF Diane F. Frey, Gillian MacNaughton, Andjela H. Kaur, and Elena K. Taborda Abstract Three crises—climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and extreme economic and social inequality—intersect and have had devastating impacts on workers’ rights to health, as well as the right to decent work, an underlying determinant of health. Yet these crises may act as catalysts, as responses present opportunities for transformation. Indeed,…

Continue reading “Crises as Catalyst: A New Social Contract Grounded in Worker Rights”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 253-267  |  PDF Brian Citro, Viorel Soltan, James Malar, Thandi Katlholo, Caoimhe Smyth, Ani Herna Sari, Olya Klymenko, and Maxime Lunga Abstract The global tuberculosis (TB) response has undergone a transformation in recent years. Calls for a paradigm shift have inspired a new focus on the importance of communities, human rights, and gender in the response. This focus has led to new approaches and innovative…

Continue reading “Building the Evidence for a Rights-Based, People-Centered, Gender-Transformative Tuberculosis Response: An Analysis of the Stop TB Partnership Community, Rights, and Gender Tuberculosis Assessment”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 269-270  |  PDF Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup and Sara Jordan In the situation of a global pandemic, how can specific vulnerable groups be protected against privacy risks that are inherent to contact tracing? Over the last 19 months, this question has motivated intense discussion by bioethicists, health law and privacy scholars, technology companies, and governments. Some of the nuance of that discussion was captured within several pieces…

Continue reading “Letter to the Editor: Privacy, Equity, and Human Rights Challenges in Public Health Surveillance”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 213-224  |  PDF Julia Kapelańska-Pręgowska Abstract In October 2020, the Polish Constitutional Court held unconstitutional an exception in the Family Planning Act of 1993 that provided for legal abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities. This retrogressive step has led to an almost total ban on abortion in Poland. Drawing on existing Strasbourg case law and other relevant legal material, this paper attempts to anticipate a…

Continue reading “The Scales of the European Court of Human Rights: Abortion Restriction in Poland, the European Consensus, and the State’s Margin of Appreciation”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 201-211  |  PDF Sven Messing, Michael Krennerich, Karim Abu-Omar, Susanne Ferschl, and Peter Gelius Abstract Public awareness of the importance of physical activity has increased due to the many lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has brought more widespread attention to a question previously confined primarily to parts of the physical activity promotion community: Do humans have a right to be active? While the…

Continue reading “Physical Activity as a Human Right?”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 173-186  |  PDF Sophia A. Zweig,* Alexander J. Zapf,* Chris Beyrer, Debarati Guha-Sapir, and Rohini J. Haar Abstract In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world have implemented public health policies that limit individual freedoms in order to control disease transmission. While such limitations on liberties are sometimes necessary for pandemic control, many of these policies have been overly broad or have neglected…

Continue reading “Ensuring Rights while Protecting Health: The Importance of Using a Human Rights Approach in Implementing Public Health Responses to COVID-19”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 187-200  |  PDF Taylor W. Burkholder, Madeline Ross, Lily Vartanyan, and Harveen Bergquist Abstract National constitutions are important tools for the realization of the right to health, and constitutional law linking health and human rights has been associated with improved access to health resources. Meanwhile, emergency care is a lifesaving service delivery platform with the potential to address much of the death and disability in…

Continue reading “A Global Review of Provisions on Emergency Care in National Constitutions”

Volume 23/2, December 2021, pp. 239-251  |  PDF Susanna Every-Palmer, Leah Kininmonth, Giles Newton-Howes, and Sarah Gordon Abstract Despite the imperatives to reduce coercive practices such as substitute decision-making, seclusion, and restraint, the psychiatric profession has struggled to realize these aspirations. Education delivered by people with lived experience of mental distress can help facilitate change. We introduced a service user-led academic program for psychiatry residents focused on promoting human rights…

Continue reading “Applying Human Rights and Reducing Coercion in Psychiatry following Service User-Led Education: A Qualitative Study”