Oral

Even though research and practical work related to health and human rights has grown exponentially, those engaged in this work still face tremendous challenges and growing pains. While the legal definition of the right to health has gained great clarity on the basis of soft law publications such as the United Nations General Comment 14 on the right to health and reports by the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, the methods for effective program planning, implementation and evaluation have remained challenging for those in the field. The gap remains between international human rights international law (paper) and public health professionals who largely see themselves as people-people as opposed to paper-people. Despite the challenges in interpreting and applying international human rights law and the right to health, some health professionals have undertaken novel approaches in an attempt to test the efficacy of right based approaches to public health. After all, rights based approaches must be proven to positively impact both health and human rights if we can expect their methods to be adopted more broadly in the public health community. The purpose of this session is to explore how public health professionals have begun to utilize rights based approaches in their public health work, the challenges faced and lessons learned.

Session Objectives: By the end of this session particpants will be able to: describe foundations documents of human rights and rights based approaches; identify some stretegies utilized by those engaged in public health work utilizing rights based approaches.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)