1st Edition
Global Health and Human Rights Principles and Practices
This textbook explores public health and individual health care through the prism of global human rights and ethical decision-making.
Written by leading experts in this field, the book is divided into three distinctive parts. Part I introduces the theoretical framework through which the core issues can be understood, contrasting a clinical approach to health care with a social determinant perspective and discussing the decolonialisation of global health. Part II discusses how a human rights rationale impacts different social groups, from children to the elderly to those with disabilities, highlighting issues such as abortion and euthanasia. Part III addresses contemporary topics such as infectious diseases, migration, mental health care, the impact of advanced medical technology and climate change. Each chapter features case studies which ask readers to assess complex ethical dilemmas, fostering decision-making based on clear moral reasoning, as well as discussion assignments and further reading.
Also featuring online video lectures, this is an important textbook that will be essential reading for students across the health sciences, including medicine and all related fields.
Introduction
Cees J. Hamelink, Dirk R. Essink and Marlies J. Visser
Part I Introduction to Global Health and Human Rights
Chapter 1 International Human Rights
Cees J. Hamelink
Chapter 2 An Introduction to Global Health
Abdul K. Azad and Dirk R. Essink
Chapter 3 The Right to Health
Cees J. Hamelink
Chapter 4 Towards Human Rights Ethics: Marrying Intuitionism, Reasoning and Communication
Cees J. Hamelink
Part II Health and Human Rights of Othered and Marginalised Groups
Chapter 5 Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: A Perspective on Gender Bias and Stereotyping in Health
Marlies J. Visser
Chapter 6 Disability and Human Rights
Mitzi M. Waltz
Chapter 7 Mental Health and Psychiatric Care
Miryam R. R. Holguín, Cees J. Hamelink and Tesania Velázquez
Chapter 8 Children and the Right to Health
Cees J. Hamelink and Victòria Fumadó
Chapter 9 Elderly People and the Right to Health
Cees J. Hamelink and Bert Keizer
Chapter 10 Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights and Health
Monserrat Vásquez Ladron de Guevara and Pilar M. d’Alò
Part III Future Challenges in Global Health and Human Rights
Chapter 11 Public Health Emergencies, Pandemics and Human Rights
Dirk R. Essink
Chapter 12 Technology and the Right to Health
Cees J. Hamelink and Dirk R. Essink
Chapter 13 Planning for the Future
Cees J. Hamelink, Dirk R. Essink and Marlies J. Visser
Epilogue
Biography
Cees J. Hamelink is Athena Professor of Globalisation, Public Health and Human Rights at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is Emeritus Professor of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam and Emeritus Professor of Theology and Communication at the VU Amsterdam. He has published 21 academic monographs, and his most recent book (2023) is on communication and human rights.
Dirk R. Essink is Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, focusing on health systems and transdisciplinarity. His research, concentrated in Vietnam, Lao PDR, Ethiopia and South Sudan, explores the integration of knowledge for public health policy and transformations. Dirk's work emphasises social justice, covering quality of care in humanitarian settings, infectious disease control and sexual and reproductive health, nutrition and research agenda setting. He is skilled in transdisciplinary, mixed methods research.
Marlies J. Visser is a researcher and lecturer at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is an experienced qualitative researcher and in that capacity has coordinated and contributed to various research projects addressing social determinants of health and access to health care, with a particular emphasis on stigma and discrimination in relation to both physical and mental health conditions and sexual and reproductive health.
