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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Blanca Rico, MD¹, Deborah Billings, PhD², Heathe Luz McNaughton Reyes, MPH³, Rodolfo Gómez Ponce de León, MD¹, and Maria de Bruyn, MA, MA¹. (1) Ipas, Pachuca 92, Colonia Condesa, Mexico City, 06140, Mexico, 011.52.55.5211.8381, ricob@ipas.org, (2) Research and Evaluation, Ipas, 300 Market Street, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, (3) Ipas consultant, 300 Market Street, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Putting human rights into practice in health services is both necessary and desirable. Health care providers play a key role in society to ensure that human dignity and social justice are respected and defended. Training medical and nursing school students in a human rights approach to health care provides them with a framework that can serve as a basis for how they approach their overall training and service delivery. Future providers will be more likely to support women's autonomy and right to health, and defend these as they move into decision-making positions. Training in human rights is a long-term strategy that can improve health care providers' practice, women's access to services, and health systems' capacity to delivery quality care.

Ipas Latin America is working to incorporate a human rights framework into medical and nursing schools in Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico and Nicaragua. This presentation discusses the strategies used to work in these four countries and the results to-date in terms of institutionalizing human rights training in medical and nursing schools, increasing professors' knowledge and skills about human rights, improving students' knowledge and attitudes about the importance of human rights to their practice, and using participatory methodologies and technologies in coursework.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the linkages between human, sexual and reproductive rights and how these relate to women’s access to services and quality of care.
• Articulate the opportunities and difficulties of applying the HR framework into medical and nursing school curricula and programs in four Latin American countries.
• Discuss different approaches for evaluating the impact of such an approach on knowledge, attitudes and practices of students and professors.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation