SPH Experts Call for ‘Culture of Health and Human Rights’.
Better population health will not be achieved by medical care alone, but instead will require political action within a larger “human rights framework” to change social and economic policies, two School of Public Health experts write in the November issue of Health Affairs.
Wendy Mariner and George Annas, professors of health law, policy and management, argue that meaningful improvements in population health, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, will require a shift in focus from medical care and lifestyle factors to the larger social and economic determinants of health and wellbeing. They say the most promising way to pursue that agenda is by linking it to broader advocacy efforts around human rights.
“The most ambitious action agenda, and the one most focused on human health, well-being, and equity, is the agenda set by human rights,” they write. “Human rights language has always had strong public support in the United States and recently has been used more forcefully by citizens demanding political action.” They cite the public response to the Flint, MI, water crisis as an example of a recent health issue that galvanized human rights’ advocacy.
“Linking health movements to human rights can mobilize more robust political action on local, state, federal, and tribal levels than a single cause can, by itself,” they say. “Joint action could expose today’s givens of disease, poverty, and inequity as intolerable violations of human rights and accelerate addressing the social determinants of health.”
The commentary by Mariner and Annas comes as the federal government has directed more resources and attention to “precision” medicine and unhealthy lifestyles, rather than to the larger drivers of population health, such as poverty and racial inequality. While numerous studies have found that education, income, housing, and discrimination have profound effects on health, “the important role of social determinants is not yet widely appreciated,” Annas and Mariner say.
“As with all social movements… progress might be incremental and slow,” they write. But they add, “Human rights offers a sustainable conceptual framework… strong enough to endure beyond inevitable setbacks to specific causes…
“As better policies are adopted,” the conclude, “the public might come to enjoy and expect health, well-being, and equity, regardless of the priority placed on health itself.”