Human rights are as essential conditions for individual and community health. This course outlines linkages between health and human rights and provides participants with practical knowledge to prevent and alleviate suffering caused by human rights violations. Using a health and human rights framework, faculty will examine a wide range of issues including armed conflict, torture and other forms of ill treatment, poverty, the economic policies and the practices of international financial institutions and multinational corporations, public health policies, environmental degradation, and the “war on terror.” As we develop an understanding of the health consequences of unrealized social, economic and cultural rights and abuses of civil and political rights, we also identify effective prevention and accountability strategies to promote health and human dignity.
Course chairs:
Sheri Weiser, MD, MPH, Assistant Adjunct Professor of Medicine,
Positive Health Program
Madhavi Dandu, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Hospital Medicine
October 16
Human Rights and Social
Reconstruction after Mass Violence
Laurel Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law,
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law;
Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic
October 23
Intentional Harm: The Role of Medical Personnel in Torture
Vincent Iacopino, MD, PhD, Senior Medical
Advisor, Physicians for Human Rights; Adjunct
Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota
School of Medicine; Senior Research Fellow,
Human Rights Center, University of California,
October 30
Public Health Impacts of US Foreign and Military Policy
Robert M. Gould, MD, President, SF-Bay Area
Chapter, Physicians for Social Responsibility;
Associate Pathologist, San Jose Kaiser
November 13
Human Rights in the Age of Environmental Devastation
and Climate Chaos
Jeffrey B. Ritterman, MD Senior Physician,
Kaiser Permanente Richmond; Chief, Division of
Cardiology
November 20
Global Health and Global Trade: Lives in the Balance
Ellen R. Shaffer, PhD, MPH, Assistant Clinical
Professor, Department of Clinical Pharmacy
December 4
Health Disparities and Human Rights
Alicia Fernandez, MD, Associate Professor of
Clinical Medicine
