Public Health & Human Rights: Evidence-Based Approaches

by Beyrer, Chris

• ISBN13: 9780801886478
• ISBN10: 0801886473
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-01
• Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV PRESS

Summary

Human rights violations are underlying causes of adverse health outcomes for vulnerable people and populations around the world. Public Health and Human Rights provides critical, evidence-based assessments and tools with which to investigate the role of rights abrogation in the health of populations -- from repressive laws to social discord, gender-based violence, human trafficking, and violations in conflict. Divided into three sections, this provocative study investigates how the complex interactions between rights and disease can best be studied, analyzed, and remedied; how the efforts of human rights advocates affect health outcomes; and how the tools of modern public health can assist in documenting, understanding, and preventing human rights violations. Part I illuminates the powerful relationship between rights work and public health practice in Thailand, Russia, Burma, and China and in U.S. prisons. Part II explores new tools and new uses of old tools for rights-based public health research. Part III confronts current policy approaches -- such as Brazil's integration of rights, HIV/AIDS programming, and the contradictory and confounding global policies on illicit drugs -- and offers recommendations for future programs and strategies.

Author Biography

Chris Beyrer, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of epidemiology and international health, director of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights, and associate director of the Center for Global Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. H. F. Pizer is the cofounder and principal of Health Care Strategies, Inc., and author, coauthor, or editor of thirteen medical books.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xv
Contributors	p. xxi
List of Acronyms	p. xxxi
Introduction. Human Rights and the Health of Populations	p. 1
Cases and Contexts
Health and Human Rights in the Midst of a Drug War: The Thai Drug Users' Network	p. 11
The Impact of Human Rights Violations on Health among Internally Displaced Persons in Conflict Zones: Burma	p. 33
Consequences of a Stalled Response: Iatrogenic Epidemic among Blood Donors in Central China	p. 65
Women's Health and Women's Rights: Selling Sex in Moscow	p. 88
Reducing Harm in Prisons: Lessons from the United States and Worldwide	p. 105
Methods
Using Molecular Tools to Track Epidemics and Investigate Human Rights and Disease Interactions	p. 127
Documenting the Effects of Trafficking in Women	p. 143
Documenting Sexual Violence among Internally Displaced Women: Sierra Leone	p. 177
The Crime of Genocide: Darfur	p. 202
Public Health Research in a Human Rights Crisis: The Effects of the Thai "War on Drugs"	p. 222
Maps in the Sand: Investigating Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan and Darfur	p. 243
Civil Conflict and Health Information: The Democratic Republic of Congo	p. 268
Policy
From Human Rights Principles to Public Health Practice: HIV/AIDS Policy in Brazil	p. 289
Seeing Double: Mapping Contradictions in HIV Prevention and Illicit Drug Policy Worldwide	p. 330
Human Rights and Public Health Ethics: Responding to the Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic	p. 362
Gender and Sexual Health Rights: Burma	p. 391
Advocacy Strategies for Affording the Right to Health	p. 419
Index	p. 437
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