http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/ The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:04:42 -0500 hourly 1 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/comment-page-1/#comment-229 Blog Roundup: Solutions in Global Health « Technology, Health & Development Thu, 30 Nov 2006 01:29:13 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/#comment-229 [...] 5) Health & Human Rights: Health Affairs While this is not directly focused on solutions it is worth pointing out the coverage on human rights. Picking up on the APHA theme, the new Health Affairs blog (for a leading policy journal) had four posts last week on human rights that you might want to check out. [...] [...] 5) Health & Human Rights: Health Affairs While this is not directly focused on solutions it is worth pointing out the coverage on human rights. Picking up on the APHA theme, the new Health Affairs blog (for a leading policy journal) had four posts last week on human rights that you might want to check out. [...]

]]> http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/comment-page-1/#comment-198 Leonard Rubenstein Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:50:14 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/#comment-198 Thanks for posting the comments of Parmeeth Atwal, George Annas, Larry Gostin, Sofia Gruskin and Georges Benjamin on the theme of human rights at the APHA annual conference. Highlighting the connections between human rights and health is a significant milestone for APHA, but if reduced to a mere theme for one conference, it will not have succeeded. Human rights is a set of values, a means of analysis – including assessments of government adherence to those values – and a powerful motivator and organizing tool to demand compliance with human rights obligations. It should ground our thinking and drive policy in public health, from stopping torture to securing health for all. But as Jonathan Mann said, it is difficult to get to that place, as a belief in human rights represents a conceptual leap, because it means seeing health, education, as well as political freedoms as rights, not as privileges, and as such represents a challenge to status quo. Embracing human rights and taking on that challenge, though, is the surest way to health and well-being in this and every society. Thanks for posting the comments of Parmeeth Atwal, George Annas, Larry Gostin, Sofia Gruskin and Georges Benjamin on the theme of human rights at the APHA annual conference. Highlighting the connections between human rights and health is a significant milestone for APHA, but if reduced to a mere theme for one conference, it will not have succeeded. Human rights is a set of values, a means of analysis – including assessments of government adherence to those values – and a powerful motivator and organizing tool to demand compliance with human rights obligations. It should ground our thinking and drive policy in public health, from stopping torture to securing health for all. But as Jonathan Mann said, it is difficult to get to that place, as a belief in human rights represents a conceptual leap, because it means seeing health, education, as well as political freedoms as rights, not as privileges, and as such represents a challenge to status quo. Embracing human rights and taking on that challenge, though, is the surest way to health and well-being in this and every society.

]]> http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/comment-page-1/#comment-196 James Colgrove Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:18:38 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2006/11/20/public-health-health-human-rights-and-the-war/#comment-196 Par Atwal reminds us that an effective and ethical public health practice cannot remain detached from political battles against injustice and inequity. The human rights theme of this year’s APHA conference carried striking historical echoes of another “call to arms” by an APHA president amid polarizing debates about the meaning of democracy and citizenship. It was in Philadelphia in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, that Paul Cornely, the association’s first African American president, gave his now-legendary address, “The Hidden Enemies of Health.” Cornely urged the APHA to become more politically active, and bluntly accused the organization of being a “mere bystander” to the momentous social issues of the day. He pointed out that the APHA had failed to put forth any plan for national health insurance over the previous decade, even as a groundswell of political support for federal involvement in the health problems of the poor led to the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare. In the years following his 1969 address, as neo-liberal ideologies of limited government were ascendant, the public health profession did not, or could not, rise to Cornely’s challenge—which is why the seminal work of Jonathan Mann and his colleagues represented such a landmark, and such a departure, for the profession. The question now, as Atwal rightly notes, is whether the profession will stay in its “comfort zone” of looking at proximate causes of illness, or whether it will push forward with uncomfortable but necessary questions about how our society organizes itself. Par Atwal reminds us that an effective and ethical public health practice cannot remain detached from political battles against injustice and inequity. The human rights theme of this year’s APHA conference carried striking historical echoes of another “call to arms” by an APHA president amid polarizing debates about the meaning of democracy and citizenship. It was in Philadelphia in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, that Paul Cornely, the association’s first African American president, gave his now-legendary address, “The Hidden Enemies of Health.” Cornely urged the APHA to become more politically active, and bluntly accused the organization of being a “mere bystander” to the momentous social issues of the day. He pointed out that the APHA had failed to put forth any plan for national health insurance over the previous decade, even as a groundswell of political support for federal involvement in the health problems of the poor led to the enactment of Medicaid and Medicare. In the years following his 1969 address, as neo-liberal ideologies of limited government were ascendant, the public health profession did not, or could not, rise to Cornely’s challenge—which is why the seminal work of Jonathan Mann and his colleagues represented such a landmark, and such a departure, for the profession. The question now, as Atwal rightly notes, is whether the profession will stay in its “comfort zone” of looking at proximate causes of illness, or whether it will push forward with uncomfortable but necessary questions about how our society organizes itself.

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