BUSPH Professors Grodin and Annas Publish New Textbook on Health and Human Rights.

Two Boston University School of Public Health professors are co-editors of a new comprehensive collection of readings, in-depth analyses, and original essays that has been hailed as “the most complete compendium on health and human rights.”

Health and Human Rights in a Changing World, recently published by Routledge, is co-edited by Michael Grodin and George Annas, professors of health law, bioethics and human rights at BUSPH. This new textbook expands the scope of their earlier books on the subject, primarily via additional thought-provoking essays from editors and contributors that present the book’s readings and analyses within specific ethical and historical contexts.

Co-editors on this project are Daniel Tarantola, a visiting professorial fellow and former professor of Health and Human Rights at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; and Sofia Gruskin, a professor of Preventive Medicine and Law at the University of Southern California.

Daniel Tarantola, Sofia Gruskin, George Annas, Michael GrodinIn the book’s first section, editors frame the field’s existing knowledge and research material as a continuum that extends from the Nuremberg Trials through and beyond current public health issues such as those generated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Later sections examine the development and applicability of human-rights-based approaches to health, as well as the role of government policies and procedures in the documented failures of these approaches.

Throughout the 664-page book, contributors challenge readers to recognize and understand the connection between health and human rights, which, Grodin says, “has grown and matured over the past 20 years.”

Grodin, who is also a professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine, explained that the field of health and human rights has blossomed to include a broad variety of topics, including sexual rights, disability, chronic disease, clean water, climate change, obesity and aging.

Health and Human Rights in a Changing World gains much of its relevance as a resource from the varied knowledge base of its contributors and editors. Editors compiled a range of viewpoints from many leading scholars in the field, including Annas, the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor at BU, chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights at BUSPH, and a professor at the BU Schools of Medicine and Law.

Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, lauded Health and Human Rights in a Changing World as “the most complete compendium on health and human rights – a much neglected and under-researched, but essential dimension of global health. It addresses both theoretical enquiries and very practical issues for a wide range of health practitioners.”