Article type
Abstract
Background
Clinical and public health guidelines aim to improve health and well-being for those for whom they are intended. Achieving "health and well-being" is also legally enshrined as a fundamental human right, "indivisible" from and contingent on other human rights – water, sanitation, the right to life, etc. Adopting a rights-based approach to health can advance equity, drawing attention to drivers of inequality, prioritizing the most vulnerable, and ensuring the engagement of target populations.
Beyond providing a framework for accountability for human rights, there are other ways in which human rights – as both a set of guiding principles and standards and a suite of legal tools - can and should influence the design of health interventions. Methods such as legal epidemiology – the scientific study of the health effects of laws and legal practices – offer tools for studying the health effects of human rights-based policies to guide policy and promote adoption of human rights-based approaches. Yet these approaches have been largely under-explored or reported in discussions of public health and evidence generation.
This presentation will provide practical examples of some of the ways human rights can be studied and how evidence of their impact can shape evidence-based decision-making.
Objectives
•Describe how human rights are important to shaping guideline development
•Present current scientific methods for mapping and evaluating the effect of human rights-based legislation and legal practice
•Provide a framework to guide evidence research that is more human rights focused.
Methods
The presentation will provide an overview of legal epidemiologic policy research methods and how they can support evidence-informed and human-rights based guideline development to drive equity-driven health outcomes, providing examples from the fields of sexual and reproductive health, mental health, HIV, and neglected tropical disease.
Conclusions
Human rights have long been associated with efforts to improve health and well-being but have largely failed to infiltrate the evidence-driven world of norm-setting. Human rights are essential values without regard to evidence of their effect, but how to effectively put human rights values into practice through policy should be a high priority for researchers, policymakers, and the public.
Clinical and public health guidelines aim to improve health and well-being for those for whom they are intended. Achieving "health and well-being" is also legally enshrined as a fundamental human right, "indivisible" from and contingent on other human rights – water, sanitation, the right to life, etc. Adopting a rights-based approach to health can advance equity, drawing attention to drivers of inequality, prioritizing the most vulnerable, and ensuring the engagement of target populations.
Beyond providing a framework for accountability for human rights, there are other ways in which human rights – as both a set of guiding principles and standards and a suite of legal tools - can and should influence the design of health interventions. Methods such as legal epidemiology – the scientific study of the health effects of laws and legal practices – offer tools for studying the health effects of human rights-based policies to guide policy and promote adoption of human rights-based approaches. Yet these approaches have been largely under-explored or reported in discussions of public health and evidence generation.
This presentation will provide practical examples of some of the ways human rights can be studied and how evidence of their impact can shape evidence-based decision-making.
Objectives
•Describe how human rights are important to shaping guideline development
•Present current scientific methods for mapping and evaluating the effect of human rights-based legislation and legal practice
•Provide a framework to guide evidence research that is more human rights focused.
Methods
The presentation will provide an overview of legal epidemiologic policy research methods and how they can support evidence-informed and human-rights based guideline development to drive equity-driven health outcomes, providing examples from the fields of sexual and reproductive health, mental health, HIV, and neglected tropical disease.
Conclusions
Human rights have long been associated with efforts to improve health and well-being but have largely failed to infiltrate the evidence-driven world of norm-setting. Human rights are essential values without regard to evidence of their effect, but how to effectively put human rights values into practice through policy should be a high priority for researchers, policymakers, and the public.