The Emory Human Rights Certificate Program is a student-initiated project that seeks to identify interdisciplinary solutions to human rights and social justice problems by bringing together public health students and faculty with their peers in other graduate disciplines, such as law, medicine, nursing, business, theology, and arts and sciences. The program is inspired by the WHO's definition of health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity," as well as the realization that many public health problems are in fact rooted in conditions of social inequality. This conception of health acknowledges the impact of economic, legal, and spiritual domains on health, and calls for increased cross-sectoral collaboration in order to achieve meaningful successes in healthcare. This program's curriculum bridges the gap between public health and other graduate disciplines, creates a space for meaningful dialogue, facilitates skill development, and catalyzes the generation of creative solutions to problems of social injustice as they apply to all professions. The curriculum also includes a mandatory service-learning component, giving students the opportunity to link human rights theory to its real-world application. This program reflects students' desires: building specific and measurable competencies, providing practical application of those skills, and allowing dialogue with fellow students. The program promotes a holistic understanding of health, challenges students to think beyond traditional definitions of health, justice and human rights, and broadens the array of solutions to the social inequalities underlying many current public health problems.
Learning Objectives: 1) To introduce an interdisciplinary program teaching human rights at the graduate level; 2) To broaden the understanding of human rights issues, and to facilitate inter-professional dialogue; 3) To generate creative solutions to problems of human rights and social justice
Keywords: Human Rights, Curricula
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.