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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA¹, Shahira Ahmed, MPH¹, Laura Ferguson, MS¹, and Daniel Tarantola, Prof². (1) Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University, 651 Huntington Ave, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115, 1-617-432-0650, sahmed@hpsh.harvard.edu, (2) Faculty of Medicine School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, UNSW, Samuels Building Room 228, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

In public health, if human rights are considered at all, it is generally only because of their moral or legal base. Human rights, however, also provide an approach to enhance the effectiveness of public health policies and programs. We focused on the area of monitoring and evaluation as indicators often drive programmatic directions. Numerous monitoring and evaluation instruments exist in the HIV/AIDS field. We reviewed indicators promoted globally and used by many countries to determine the extent to which rights concerns were integrated within them, and to suggest approaches for better integration of rights for future efforts. Human rights principles identified as relevant to the effectiveness of HIV programming including non-discrimination, participation, and accountability, were used to conduct this assessment. Although existing indicators touched on rights issues, some key lessons were learned. The extent to which non-discrimination could be assessed was hampered by the lack of disaggregated data. While a number of indicators measured participation, existing efforts do not sufficiently grapple with the complexity of measuring participation of the most vulnerable. Even when indicators are concerned with measuring accountability through the existence of laws and policies, no information is provided on the content, quality, or process of implementation. Recommendations noted for public health efforts generally include: modification of existing indicators; the addition of a few targeted indicators; joint collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data; and conduct of targeted evaluation research to paint a fuller picture inclusive of human rights concerns.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Articulate the different ways human rights can be applied in public health.
• Recognize the various human rights principles relevant to HIV/AIDS programming.
• Discuss key lessons and challenges to be learned from a human rights analysis of existing HIV/AIDS indicators.
• Discuss how key lessons learned can be applied to monitoring and evaluation efforts more generally.

Keywords: Policy/Policy Development, Data/Surveillance

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation