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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Stephen P. Marks, Doc D’État, Dip, Department of Population and International Health, Director, Program on Human Rights in Development, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-4316, smarks@hsph.harvard.edu

Health disparities have devastating impacts on public health and economic development at both local and global levels. At the global level, the problems have been analyzed and policy recommendations formulated through two different and mutually reinforcing paradigms. The first is social justice, which questions the structural factors that cause poverty and marginalization. The institutions of the international political economy are dominated by corporate and national interests that place a priority on the efficiency of markets and increasing the aggregate levels of goods and services. The social justice framework questions those priorities and seeks a higher degree of distributive justice for the poor and socially excluded. The second paradigm is that of international human rights, according to which all human beings are entitled to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The obligations of all states to realize these rights extend to control over the behavior of private parties, including corporations. The perspectives of both social justice and human rights have profound implications for understanding global politics, economics and health and contribute, in different ways, to the objective of global equity.

Learning Objectives: