Rights-based approaches (RBAs) to health encompass an exciting range of ways that the United Nations, governments, and nongovernmental organizations incorporate human rights into public health efforts. By reviewing the academic literature and discrepant articulations of human rights and RBAs by key institutions, the authors identify common rights principles relevant to health and discuss a framework to improve implementation and guide assessment of the contributions of RBAs to health. Journal of Public Health Policy (2010) 31, 129-145. doi:10.1057/jphp.2010.7Keywords: human rights; public health; policy A Rights-Based Approach To HealthOver the last 20 years the public health community has come to a largely shared perspective that a human rights lens on health helps shape understandings of who is disadvantaged and who is not; who is included and who is ignored; and whether a given disparity is merely a difference or an actual injustice.1,2 Even so, academics, the United Nations (UN), government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) still struggle with how to operationalize a rights-based approach (RBA) to health. 3Below we identify principles underlying RBAs and key definitional challenges. We review how scholars describe RBAs and analyze statements of key institutions as the basis for discussing the implications of diverse understandings of RBAs for policy, programs, r

Global initiatives and recent G8 commitments to health systems strengthening have brought increased attention to factors affecting health system performance. While equity concerns and human rights language appear often in the global health discourse, their inclusion in health systems efforts beyond rhetorical pronouncements is limited. Building on recent work assessing the extent to which features compatible with the right to health are incorporated into national health systems, we examine how health systems frameworks have thus far integrated human rights concepts and human rights-based approaches to health in their conceptualisation. Findings point to the potential value of the inclusion of human rights in these articulations to increase the participation or involvement of clients in health systems, to broaden the concept of equity, to bring attention to laws and policies beyond regulation and to strengthen accountability mechanisms.

The Global Gag Rule does not make sense. It is not applied to the US. Instead, it is applied to countries that are the poorest, that have the highest rates of maternal mortality. Staff of a Kenyan Government Population Policy Bodyl F amily planning assistance in the US has directly advanced, supported, and helped to build the infrastructure of family planning services in over 50 countries around the world since 1965. Family planning funds, channelled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have allowed women and families around the world to improve their quality of life.2 Tragically, in recent years, it has become harder for USAID to achieve successes in family planning. Restrictions placed on US family planning funds have created lasting damage to family planning programs around the world that rely on US support. On his first day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush reinstated a controversial policy (first instituted by the Reagan Administration in 1984) that infringes on the rights to health and life of women living in developing countries.3 The policy in question, officially known as the Mexico City Policy,

Human rights analyses, concepts, and in particular rhetoric have played a consistent role in the global response to HIV for over two decades. Despite the longstanding recognition of human rights as essential to an effective response, recent global guidance, particularly with respect to the implementation of antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up efforts, falls short of meaningfully incorporating human rights norms and concepts. Applying human rights to ART scale-up draws attention to who is gaining access to ART, how they are gaining access, and over what period of time, not just how many people gain access. Deliberate consideration of the human rights principles of the interdependence of rights (including attention to the legal and policy environment), participation, non-discrimination, accountability, and key aspects of the right to health can help to identify and overcome some of the challenges to increasing and sustaining access to treatment and needed services, as well as to promote accountability and transparency for what is done and how it is done. Whereas a need remains to document evidence of the ways in which a lack of attention to human rights negatively influences the long-term outcomes of scale-up programmes, this paper focuses on the positive role human rights can play in ART scale-up efforts, and offers suggestions for research and action moving forward.