Health as a Human Right

This course explores the concept and practice of health as a human right, from an interdisciplinary perspective rooted in the social sciences. While an overwhelming amount of research points to the fact that many of the determinants of ill health in society are social forces, things like poverty, inequality, and racial and ethnic exclusion, we still tend to seek technological solutions to disease rather than examining ways to alter these underlying causes. In this class, we will examine health through the sociologist's (or anthropologist's or political scientist's) lens rather than through the medical doctor's, seeking not to cure specific afflictions through new medical interventions, but rather to understand how societies are often organized in ways that promote ill health, how this might be altered, and to what extent the concepts and practices of human rights might be useful tools toward that end.