Human Rights

The intersection of health and human rights continues to expand as stakeholders concerned with social vulnerability realize the interrelated nature of all human rights and health outcomes. As health practitioners and scholars engage more deeply with a human rights lens, they are forced to acknowledge the deep-seated social processes and relationships that endanger people’s mental health, physical health, and well-being. Using a human rights lens in health humanities provides insight into advocating for social change that addresses the subversive forms of oppression that impact health status, morbidity, and mortality. Such advocacy requires increased collaboration between health entities and other rights-focused organizations. Power, biases, and discriminatory practices ebb and flow not only within the health-care system but throughout all facets of societies. To examine the relationship between health humanities and human rights, there must be a basic knowledge of the trajectory of international human rights law and its applications to health and well-being.