Health and Human Rights: An International Journal

The FXB Center’s flagship publication, Health and Human Rights: An International Journal (HHR), continued this year to provide intellectual leadership in the global effort to realize the right to health, in particular for children and other vulnerable groups. During 2008-2009, the journal team further developed HHR’s online, open access focus on topical issues by leaders in the field with theme issues on accountability and participation and with the launch of a redesigned blog, OpenForum.

Accountability was the focus of Volume 10, Number 2. The Critical Concepts section, edited by Alicia Ely Yamin, included articles on the role of litigation in government accountability, reforming trade rules on medicine, and judicial activism in Argentina. The Health and Human Rights in Practice section, co-edited by Evan Lyon and Vivek Maru, featured the denial of the right to water in Haiti, women’s reproductive rights in Ecuador’s Amazon Basin, and a relative response ranking of countries’ responses to HIV/AIDS. Two articles in the Perspectives section considered human rights limitations in controlling tuberculosis and the failure of the Global Fund to benefit the health and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons, sex workers, and men who have sex with men.

The significance of promoting participation in rights-based approaches to health is the focus of the most recent issue, Volume 11, Number 1. This issue of the journal opens with an interview with Anand Grover, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Articles include essays on the role of empowerment in participation, political violence in Guatemala, the effect of decentralized health care on participation in Indonesia, mental health in Northern Ireland, the use of “photovoice” in ensuring the right to food for mothers and children in the United States, the option of refusing to participate as a bargaining chip of the poor, and the issue of rights and participation in treating HIV/AIDS in Cuba. With Vivek Maru’s appointment to the journal’s editorial advisory board, Arlan Fuller, Policy Director at the FXB Center, joins Evan Lyon as an executive editor of the Health and Human Rights in Practice section.

The energy and immediate voices of practitioners, students, and activists at the local, national, and international level continue to drive the journal’s vision as a scholarly, peer-reviewed academic journal. This energy was evident at a launch event for the journal’s re-release as an open access publication in September 2008, when the Loeb Drama Center’s 550-seat auditorium was filled to overflowing for a panel discussion on “Creating on Open Forum to Advance Global Health and Social Justice.” The panel included Dr. Paul Farmer, Editor-in-Chief; Dr. Jim Yong Kim, Publisher and Director of the FXB Center; and three members of the journal’s editorial board: Dr. Agnès Binagwaho, Executive Secretary of Rwanda’s National AIDS Commission; Dr. Gavin Yamey, Senior Editor of PLoS Medicine; and Philip Alston, the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law. A summary of the event is available online at http://www.hhropenforum.org/2008/09/making-the-case-for-the-right-to-health/.

HHR’s newest development is its re-designed blog, OpenForum (http://www.hhropenforum.org). Supported by the HHR community, OpenForum is a space for immediate, action-oriented dialogue among human rights practitioners. OpenForum publishes unique commentaries by professionals writing from the field, as well as provocative summaries, opinions, and reviews of news articles, other blogs, and journal articles. Through these voices, expressed in text, image, and video, OpenForum contributes to fostering the global movement for health and human rights.

The journal’s global impact is evident from the number of online visitors to HHR websites. Since July 1, 2008, HHR has been visited approximately 27,600 times by approximately 18,000 unique visitors from 169 countries/territories, with an average of 62 visits per day. The top ten countries from which we receive visitors are (in order) the US, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, India, South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain. Since it's re-launch as OpenForum in early May, the HHR blog has been visited approximately 6,400 times by approximately 3,900 unique visitors from 120 countries/territories, with an average of 46 visits per day. The top ten countries visiting the OpenForum site are (in order) the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Belgium, Switzerland, Peru, and the Netherlands.

HHR plays a direct role in education, with short-term and summer interns assisting in all aspects of blog and journal production. During 2008-2009, we welcomed high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate interns whose experiences were enriched and who in turn enriched the journal with fresh insights on international health and human rights issues.

Looking ahead, the journal invites thoughtful, critical essays on any topic relevant to health and human rights. During 2009-2010 we are preparing an issue on non-discrimination and equality, as well as a special theme issue on international assistance and cooperation.

Teaching and learning in global health are undergoing the most profound methodological transformation in their history. This transformation, if carried through successfully, may at last allow us to collectively solve - rather than perpetually re-describe - longstanding global public health problems. By supporting online, open access research, advocacy, and action that relates to children’s health and rights, HHR remains a central voice in critical scholarship and action-oriented dialogue among human rights practitioners.

More information is available at the journal’s website, http://www.hhrjournal.org.