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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Sarah Shannon, Executive Director, Hesperian Foundation, 1919 Addison St. #304, Berkeley, CA 94704, 510-845-1447, sarahs@hesperian.org

As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, advances in science and technology secure better health and longer lives, but only for the wealthier fractions of each country's (and the world's) population. The corporate imperative to increase profit has become the central organizing principle of our societies and international development. Meanwhile, internationally determined social goals and human rights, as articulated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, are being marginalized. The majority of people are becoming poorer, sicker, and increasingly enjoying fewer basic human rights, including the Right to Health.

This presentation will look at the experience of the international People's Health Movement and affiliated campaigns in the struggle for the Right to Health. It will show how using a rights-based approach to the social, political and economic determinants of health is an empowering way for ordinary people to organize for justice and achieve Health for All.

Learning Objectives:

• Show how applying a “rights-based” perspective to health can help activists understand the complex interactions of economics, politics, and environment with health.
• Demonstrate through examples from the People’s Health Movement how organizing around the social determinants of health can be a successful strategy to push policy toward acknowledging the right to Health for All.
• Explore the necessity of mobilizing grassroots social movements to struggle for a “rights-based” agenda against the combined power of transnational corporations and governments advancing a “privatizing” agenda.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No