Using clinical skills to bear witness and work in solidarity to further human and civil rights

As a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist with a particular interest in the structures of health care delivery and the intersection between women’s health and politics, as my career evolved, I became more focused on health care and human rights in Israel/Palestine.  In 2003 I began to co-organize an annual health and human rights delegation to the region, working with Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, Palestinian Medical Relief Society, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and a host of other NGOs and governmental agencies.  This has now become the main focus of my post-clinical life. I continue to organize and participate in a variety of delegations working to deliver care as well as to document conditions on the ground.

I am working on my third book on the region, (Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience, 2007, second edition, 2010 and On the Brink: Israel and Palestine on the Eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion, 2014) and I have produced a documentary film (Voices Across the Divide) which premiered at the Boston Palestine Film Festival in 2013. Both will be available at the session.  I am also involved in hosting Palestinian medical students who are training at Harvard Medical School and help support an exchange program between Harvard and Al Quds Medical School in East Jerusalem as well as mentoring the occasional graduate student and students in Gaza involved in a writing program, We Are Not Numbers. I find the intersections between health care, public health, and bearing witness a powerful opportunity to use my clinical and observational skills to build political activism based on universal human and civil rights.