The right to the highest attainable standard of health: Public health's opportunity to reframe a human rights debate in the United States

Health and Human Rights

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 115-133

  Shinn, Carolynne ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HEALTH POLICY; HUMAN RIGHTS; PUBLIC HEALTH; SOCIAL POLICY;

ARTICLE; CIVIL RIGHTS; HEALTH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; LEGAL APPROACH; LEGAL ASPECT; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL MEDICINE; UNITED STATES;

HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; LEGAL APPROACH;

CIVIL RIGHTS; HEALTH; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL MEDICINE; UNITED STATES;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 0032842248     PISSN: 10790969     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4065170     Document Type: Article

References (60)

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2. L. McQuillan, "Clinton Vows to Close Gap in Health Care," The Boston Globe, 22 February 1998.
3. J. Iglehart, "The American Health Care System," New England Journal of Medicine 1992, 326(14): 962-67; R. Blendon and J. M. Benson, "Whatever Happened to Politicians' Concerns about the Nation's Uninsured?" American Journal of Public Health 1998, 88(3): 345-16.
4. R. Roemer, "The Right to Health Care," in: H. Fuenzalida-Puelma and
5. Connors (eds), The Right to Health in the Americas (Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 1989); Iglehart (see note 3).
6. Z. Bankowski, "Ethics and Human Values in Health Policy," World Health Forum 17, 1996: 146-49; T. Murray, "Communities Need More Than Autonomy," Hastings Center Report 1994, 24(3): 32-33.
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8. Preamble, Constitution of the World Health Organization, adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19 June-22 July 1946, and signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States.
9. Declaration of Alma-Alta, adopted at the WHO International Conference on Primary Health Care, Geneva, 12 September 1978.
10. H. Fuenzalida-Puelma and S. Connors (eds), The Right to Health in the Americas (Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 1989), p. xv.
11. World Health Organization, "Health for All in the 21st Century," Draft Document, 1997, WHO Doc. No. EB101/8.
12. WHO (see note 10).
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15. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A (III), UN GAOR, Res. 71, UN Doc. A/810 (1966).
16. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI), UN GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 49, UN Doc. A/ 6316(1966).
17. Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, UN GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp. No. 49, at 166, UN Doc. A/44/25 (1989).
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19. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, G.A. Res. 34/180 UN GAOR, 34th Sess., Supp. No. 46, at 193, UN Doc. A/34/46 (1979).
20. American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, approved by the Ninth International Conference of American States on 2 May 1948, Resolution XXX, Pan American Union. The Declaration is not a treaty, but an authoritative catalog of human rights that States parties to the OAS Charter are under legal obligation to promote.
21. The U.S. is not party to the ICESCR, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
22. N. K. Bell, "The Scarcity of Medical Resources: Are There Rights to Health Care?" The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1979, 4(2): 159.
23. V. Leary, "The Right to Health in International Health Rights Law," Health and Human Rights 1994, 1(1): 26-58.
24. Leary (see note 21); Bell (see note 20); Roemer (see note 4); M. Susser, "Health as a Human Right: An Epidemiologist's Perspective on the Public Health," American Journal of Public Health 1993, 83(3): 418-26.
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26. Iglehart (see note 3).
27. A. Eide, "Realization of Social and Economic Rights and the Minimum Threshold Approach," Human Rights Law Journal 1989,10:35-37; T. L. Beauchamp and R. R. Faden, "The Right to Health and the Right to Health Care," The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1979, 4(2): 11831; Bell (see note 20); J. A. Childress, "A Right to Health Care?" The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1979, 4(2): 132-7; L. B. McCullough, "Rights, Health Care, and Public Policy," The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1979, 4(2): 204-15.
28. S. M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1996). This "American Creed" summarizes a set of sometimes-conflicting U.S. values deeply embedded in the national psyche since its founding as a democracy: individual freedom and equality, absence of an aristocracy or monarchy, and freedom from government intervention, which also extends to capitalist free-market trade.
29. A. de Tocqueville (trans. H. Reeve), Democracy in America (New York: Vintage, 1990).
30. Tocqueville (see note 27), p. 99.
31. Lipset (see note 26), p. 72.
32. Roemer (see note 4), p. 19.
33. Roemer (see note 4), p. 19; Childress (see note 25).
34. Leary (see note 21).
35. A. M. Capron, "United States of America," in: H. Fuenzalida-Puelma and S. Connors (eds), The Right to Health in the Americas (Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 1989); Curran (see note 1 ); Roemer (see note 4).
36. U.S. Constitution, art. 1. See Capron (note 33), p. 504.
37. Capron (see note 33). According to Capron, only the 1868 post-Civil War "equal protection" clause in Amendment XIV can be argued to "have broken the mold and created rights germane to a consideration of citizens health in relation to their government" (p. 500).
38. Iglehart (see note 3), p. 963.
39. These federal programs provide protection to U.S. citizens as follows: The Social Security Act of 1935 assures income assistance for those unable to work due to age or disability. Medicare provides financing of health care for those aged 65 or older. Medicaid finances health care for the poor, subject to income eligibility requirements. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to implement environmental legislation, all of which directly or indirectly impacts health (consider, for example, air and water pollution or pesticide use). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created in 1970 to ensure safe and healthy work conditions in the private sector. In addition to these federal programs, states administer workers' compensation plans for job-related injuries.
40. Capron (see note 33), p. 51.
41. R. A. Priester, "A Values Framework for Health System Reform," Health Affairs 1992, 11(2): 84.
42. Priester (see note 39).
43. J. Mann, "Dignity and Health: The UHDR's Revolutionary First Article," Health and Human Rights 1998, 3(2): 37.
44. E. Maclaren, "Dignity," Journal of Medical Ethics 1977, 3: 40-41.
45. Maclaren (see note 42), p. 41.
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47. R. Crawford, "The Boundaries of the Self and the Unhealthy Other: Reflections on Health, Culture and AIDS," Social Science and Medicine 1994, 38(10): 1348.
48. S. Lawless, S. Kippax, and J. Crawford, "Dirty, Diseased and Undeserving: The Positioning of HIV-Positive Women," Social Science and Medicine 1996, 43(9): 1377.
49. J. Mann (see note 41), p. 35.
50. E. Pamuk, D. Makuc, K. Heck, C. Reuben, and K. Lochner, Status and Health Chart Book: Health, United States, 1998 (Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics, 1998).
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52. B. G. Link and J. Phelan, "Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1995,36(Extra Issue): 80-94.
53. E. O. Wright, "The Class Analysis of Poverty," International Journal of Health Services 1995, 25(1): 91. Wright argues persuasively that poverty is not a byproduct of the American social system, but rather an inherent and crucial feature that benefits capitalists: "Economic oppression is thus a situation in which the material benefits of one group are acquired at the expense of another, and in which morally indictable coercive exclusion from resources is an essential part of the process by which this occurs" (p. 91).
54. J. Mann and D. Tarantola, AIDS in the World II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 441.
55. N. Krieger, D. L. Rowley, et al. "Racism, Sexism, and Social Class: Implications for Studies of Health, Disease and Well-Being," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 1993, 9: 82-122; M. E. J. Wadsworth, "Health Inequalities in the Life Course Perspective," Social Science and Medicine 1997, 44: 859-69.
56. S. L. Syme, "Rethinking Disease: Where Do We Go from Here?" Annals of Epidemiology 1996, 6: 463.
57. R. G. Wilkinson, "Socioeconomic Determinants of Health: Health Inequalities: Relative or Absolute Deprivation?" British Medicine Journal 1997, 314: 591-95; N. E. Adler, T. Boyce, M. A. Chesney, et al., "Socioeconomic Status and Health: The Challenge of the Gradient," American Psychologist 1994, 49: 15-24.
58. Susser (see note 22); N. E. Adler, T. Boyce, M. A. Chesney, et al., "Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health: No Easy Solution," Journal of the American Medical Association 1993, 209(24): 3140-45.
59. M. Brodie, The Four Am ericas: Government and Social Policy through the Eyes of America's Multi-Racial and Multi-Ethnic Society, report of the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard Survey Project, December 1995.
60. Religious volunteerism movements, which are not always included when traditional human rights advocates are referenced, represent an untapped resource. Admittedly religious moral absolutism has often been a tool of oppression, but there is also a strong tradition of human rights advocacy in many religious sects.