PHA-Exch> Participate in the Re-launching of the Health and Human Rights Journal at Harvard’s School of Public Health

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Nicholas Lusiani nlusiani at escr-net.org
 from our colleague, Cathy Albisa at NESRI.
________________________________________

Dear All,
I enthusiastically recommend that all of us involved and committed to ESCR
participate in Paul Farmer's re-launch of the Health and Human Rights
Journal at Harvard's School of Public Health.  It is geared as much towards
activists as to academics, and focuses on the development of praxis in the
arena of ESCR.   It is open source and interactive, and I hope a harbinger
of things to come in terms of partnerships between academic and activists
circles.  Here is the link http://www.hhrjournal.org/index.php/hhr  and
below is the intro from the editors. At the very minimum read Paul's
introduction Challenging orthodoxies: The road ahead for health and human
rights  http://www.hhrjournal.org/index.php/hhr/article/view/33/100  It
offers much to think about!  And for those of you interested in where the
ESCR debate is at in the United States, you'll find it worth your time to
read Anja Rudiger's piece From market competition to solidarity? Assessing
the prospects of US health care reform plans from a human rights perspective
at http://www.hhrjournal.org/index.php/hhr/article/view/23/80

"Praxis makes perfect." Dr. Paul Farmer

Cathy Albisa
Executive Director
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)
90 John Street, Ste. 308
New York, NY 10038
tel: (212) 253-1761
fax:(212) 385-6124
www.nesri.org<http://www.nesri.org>

The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative: Bringing Human Rights to
Social Movements!
>From the editors

This issue of Health and Human Rights opens a new chapter in the life of the
journal. Volume 10, Issue 1, is the first to appear under Paul Farmer's
editorship and the first to be published in an open-access online format.
The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights welcomes a
new editorial and technical team to support the journal, along with a new
cohort of colleagues who have joined the distinguished ranks of our
Editorial Board and Senior Advisory Board.

In presenting this issue, we are delighted to reaffirm connections with the
readership of the journal's first decade and to welcome a new public that
will discover HHR for the first time in our electronic format. In the coming
years, we will strive to maintain the impeccable intellectual standards set
by the journal's previous editors, Jonathan Mann and Sofia Gruskin, while
exploring new directions and engaging new constituencies.

The hallmark of Health and Human Rights in this era will be a focus on
praxis: exploring how the concepts of human rights can contribute to
struggles for well-being by impoverished and oppressed peoples around the
world. The journal's mission can be succinctly formulated:

Health and Human Rights is an international journal dedicated to scholarship
and praxis that advance health as an issue of fundamental human rights and
social justice. It seeks to provide a forum for academics, practitioners,
and activists from public health, human rights, and related fields to
explore how rights-based approaches to health can be implemented in
practice. In so doing, it contributes to fostering a global movement for
health and human rights.

Praxis implies a steady, mutually-reinforcing interplay between thought and
action. Accordingly, this and each future issue of Health and Human Rights
will include two synergistic sections. The first, entitled "Critical
Concepts," will examine the conceptual foundations of a human rights
approach to health through rigorous scholarship. The second, "Health and
Human Rights in Practice," provides a forum to analyze challenges and
solutions in implementing rights-based approaches to health. These two
rubrics will resist the traditional dichotomy between theory and practice,
seeking instead to foster engaged scholarship and reflective activism. In
doing so, they will open directions for informed action by and with
communities to realize the full spectrum of human rights.

The first several issues of HHR's new series adopt a unified thematic
structure that we believe will enhance their contribution to knowledge and
action on the right to health. The current issue lays conceptual foundations
for subsequent analyses. It asks the questions — deceptively simple — of
what a human rights approach to health actually is, and what distinctive
value it contributes. Answers come from a diverse group of authoritative
contributors. Taken together, these responses provide a probing reflection
of the current state of discourse and action on the right to health,
illuminating both the promise of rights-based approaches and the challenges
still to be confronted.

In recent years there has been increasing consensus around a set of core
dimensions of rights-based approaches to health. These dimensions provide
the conceptual armature for our forthcoming issues, which will explore: 1)
accountability; 2) meaningful participation; 3) non-discrimination and
equality; and 4) international assistance and cooperation. These terms are
often used in very different ways in the human rights and health fields.
Surface consensus on their status as key principles can mask contested
questions as to what they might mean in particular contexts. The first
cluster of HHR issues, therefore, will take up these themes in order to
clarify points of conceptual agreement, together with critical disputes and
their implications. Each issue will highlight both challenges and successful
strategies for pursuing rights-based approaches in practice. All readers are
warmly invited to visit the journal website for details about publication
dates and submissions deadlines.

HHR is committed to bringing into our pages the experiences and analyses of
frontline human rights practitioners, activists, community organizers, and
others who may previously have had limited opportunities to publish in
academic journals. Our editors are happy to work intensively with authors
who have important experiences and knowledge to transmit but who may be less
familiar with the conventions of scholarly prose. We also encourage
inquiries and article submissions in languages other than English. While our
capacities in this regard are currently limited, we hope in the future to
publish an increasing number of texts translated into English from other
languages, and eventually to make the original-language versions of these
articles available through our website.

The philosophy underlying HHR's move to an openaccess electronic publishing
format is eloquently set out in this issue by Gavin Yamey. In embracing the
open-access model, HHR aligns itself with a global movement for the
democratization of scientific knowledge production and a more equitable
distribution of the benefits of science, particularly in health. HHR's
distinctive contribution to this movement will come through the journal's
systematic linking of conceptual and legal human rights analysis with
documentation of concrete, front-line experiences translating rights
principles into social change and health progress on the ground.

HHR's new electronic format offers resources to expand and accelerate
knowledge-sharing on the right to health, making this communication
increasingly multi-directional and participatory. Readers who register on
the website will be able to post their comments on specific passages of
published articles. By registering, readers can also receive further
information and contacts from the journal's editors, so that the
conversation can expand. Discussion of relevant issues will deepen through
the journal's blog. The blog incorporates photographs, video, and other
multimedia resources to enhance our understanding of the stakes of rights
failures and successes, the challenges that practitioners and communities
face, and the creative solutions being deployed to advance the right to
health on multiple levels, including policy-making, program implementation,
advocacy, and community mobilization. The blog will feature information on
selected conferences, events, campaigns, and actions relevant to health and
human rights.

In addition to core articles to appear in the print version of the journal,
the HHR website (http://www.hhrjournal.org) showcases a section of
"Perspectives": web-only features, including policy analyses, issue briefs,
and advocacy documents, as well as invited opinion pieces and short essays
aimed to stimulate debate on health and rights. Over time, the website will
also provide links, not only to other online journals and information
resources, but to emergent spaces in which communities of practice are
organizing to strengthen peer-to-peer learning among practitioners in
rights-based health program design and service delivery (for example, the
Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University). Our hope is that the
effect ultimately generated by these interactive features will be a
qualitative change in how readers relate to and use Health and Human Rights.
Increasingly, knowledge-sharing through the journal platform will be
"horizontal" and collaborative in character, with readers engaged in
defining the questions to be pursued and evaluating the evidence brought
forward.

We take this opportunity to acknowledge the colleagues who have provided
advice and support during HHR's move to its new format, helping us overcome
a range of technical and administrative challenges. We are especially
grateful to Gavin Yamey of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals for
his tireless creative energy and expert guidance on a wide range of topics.
Warm thanks also go to Claire Kendall and her colleagues at Open Medicine;
Matthew Anderson of Social Medicine; Gunther Eysenbach, Editor and Publisher
of the Journal of Medical Internet Research; and the innovative community
connected with the Public Knowledge Project and Open Journal Systems, in
particular, John Willinsky and M.J. Suhonos. The HHR editorial core team has
benefited from the generous assistance of colleagues at Partners In Health,
the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Division of Social Medicine and
Health Inequalities of the Brigham and Women's Hospital, in particular,
Andrew Marx and Linea Rowe. We are exceptionally grateful to Sofia Gruskin
and her editorial and administrative team, who took pains to ensure a smooth
transition process.

As we move forward, the success of Health and Human Rights will be measured
by the degree to which people working to realize health rights in settings
of adversity find HHR an enabling resource for their work. We invite our
expanding community of readers to join actively in shaping the journal's
content and presentation in the years ahead, so that, collectively, we can
maximize the publication's usefulness in the field.

Paul Farmer
Alexander Irwin
Evan Lyon
Vivek Maru
Alicia Ely Yamin
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