Health Rights in Global Historical Perspective: Call For Papers


Health Rights in Global Historical Perspective: Call For Papers

Conference at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK, 17-18 February 2011

The idea that individuals have rights within the context of health has deep roots.  The right to health was amongst the 'rights of man'
established during the French Revolution and patients' rights and doctors' duties were of concern in places such as England from the eighteenth century onwards.  Rights to health care became incorporated within European welfare states during the twentieth century but, as more recent debates over health care in the USA demonstrate, rights and health remain disputed territory.

This conference aims to explore the understanding and application of the notion of rights to health within different historical and geographical settings.  Themes to be addressed include (but are not restricted to):

- Changing conceptions of health rights across time and space
- The health rights of different population groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, migrants)
- The health rights of different disease sufferers (e.g. mental illness, communicable disease)
- Different types of health rights (e.g. reproductive rights, rights to life/death, right to consent, right to complain)
- The construction of different health issues as (human) rights problems (e.g. access to medicines, women's rights to reproductive health)
- Health rights & the law
- Health rights & the market place
- Health rights & the state
- Health rights & international organisations (e.g. WHO, United Nations)
- Health rights & access to health care
- Health rights & civil society (e.g. patient associations, international/national/local NGOs, information and protest campaigns)
- The expertise and techniques of health rights (e.g.
monitoring/reporting, campaigning, networks of experts and activists)

Proposals are invited that address the themes of the conference in any historical period and geographical context.  Papers will be limited to 20 minutes in length.  Please submit paper proposals, including a 300 word abstract and speakers' contact details to Alex.Mold@lshtm.ac.uk by
1 October 2010.



Dr Alex Mold
Lecturer in History
Centre for History in Public Health
Faculty of Public Health and Policy
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
15-17 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9SH

Tel. + 44 (0)20 7927 2166