Harvard Law School, USA.
Health Hum Rights. 2008;10(1):45-63.
Since this journal was first published, rights-based approaches to health have prolferated in the health and development communities. At the same time, human rights advocacy organizations, courts, and UN actors have increasingly been engaged in applying rights norms in health contexts. Together with others in this issue, this article is a call not to lose sight of the radical potential of using a human rightsparadigm to promote health--even as we go about the pragmatic work of translating rights frameworks into practice in our research, advocacy, litigation strategies, program planning, and service delivery. Drawing together points made in other pieces in this issue, the article describes certain conceptual and practical implications of a transformative engagement between health and human rights. It argues that an appropriate starting point is to take suffering seriously; in so doing, approaches in both health and rights will necessarily shift. A human rights approach challenges biological individualism in both clinical medicine and public health, and builds on work in social epidemiology by providing frameworks for accountability. At the same time, using rights to advance the health of marginalized peoples around the world requires critiquing and expanding limited approaches to human rights, in theory and practice.
自这份期刊首次出版以来，以权利为基础的健康方法在卫生和发展领域中大量涌现。与此同时，人权倡导组织、法院和联合国行为体越来越多地参与将权利规范应用于卫生领域。本文与本期的其他文章一道，呼吁人们不要忽视利用人权范式促进健康的激进潜力——即使我们在研究、倡导、诉讼策略、规划方案和提供服务方面，忙于将权利框架转化为实践。本文汇集了本期其他文章中的观点，阐述了健康与人权之间的变革性接触所带来的某些概念和实践影响。它认为，一个适当的起点是认真对待苦难；这样做的话，健康和权利领域的方法必然会发生转变。人权方法在临床医学和公共卫生中挑战了生物个体主义，并通过提供问责框架，借鉴了社会流行病学的工作。同时，利用权利来增进世界各地边缘化人群的健康，需要在理论和实践上批判和拓展有限的人权方法。
