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Activities April-June 1999 Executive Summary The second quarter of 1999 included many activities both within the United States and internationally. The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center is extremely excited to have received a recommendation for consultative status with the United Nations in this period. The past months saw increased activity with the specialized agencies of the UN—WHO and UNAIDS in particular—as well as work with some of the human rights bodies of the system. The Center remains committed to ensuring implementation of the Cairo and Beijing agendas. This includes training on the use of these documents for policy and programmatic work, as well as simply informing people of the utility of the commitments they contain for connecting public health and human rights efforts. The South Africa course for the Operationalizing Cairo and Beijing Initiative took place in this period, with the rights module reformulated to take into account the levels of governmental commitment to these issues expressed at recent gatherings concerning implementation of the Cairo and Beijing agendas. In addition, work continued with NGOs in the U.S. and outside on preparations for the 5-year review of Beijing, which is to take place in the spring of 2000. The re-emergence of mandatory named reporting and partner notification in this period as issues of interest to governments also resulted in a flurry of activity in this period. A great deal of attention in this period has been focused on beginning to ensure attention to human rights in the context of HIV/AIDS care in a number of locations and venues. The FXB Center is uniquely positioned to ensure the global dissemination of consistent messages and concerns with respect to the human rights issues raised by HIV/AIDS care, and it is working with several different institutions and groups to promote this approach. Finally, it appears that the Search Committee is nearing resolution on the appointment of the new Center Director and that an announcement will be made in the coming weeks. Following are the activities that marked the second quarter of 1999. Core Activities Education and Training Academic Courses The HSPH course "Frontiers of Knowledge in HIV/AIDS: Prevention, Care and Research," which Daniel Tarantola and Jonathan Mann created two years ago, was taught in this period by Michael Reich. Daniel Tarantola gave the opening lecture with a focus on risk and vulnerability, and Sofia Gruskin gave the lecture on the relationship between HIV/AIDS and human rights. Sofia Gruskin gave a seminar on May 4 for this year’s HSPH Takemi Fellows entitled "Operationalizing Cairo and Beijing: Successes and Problems in Training and Advocacy" and gave a guest lecture on June 24 entitled "The Role of UNAIDS" in the HSPH summer short course "The Politics of Health Sector Development," taught by Paul Campbell. Also in this period, student evaluations were received for the Health and Human Rights course taught in B period and the Women, Gender and Health course taught in C period. Student satisfaction with both courses was extremely high. Student Tutorials/Advising Center staff supervised several independent study projects during this quarter. Of particular interest was one project on the links between sexuality and human rights and another focused on the impact of concepts of spirituality on the creation of health policy. Global Initiatives UN Developments In this period, the Center was recommended by the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations for Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. The final decision will be made at the end of July. Acceptance would mark the culmination of four years of efforts towards accreditation. Mandatory Named Reporting/Family Notification A substantial amount of activity in this period was due to the re-emergence of mandatory named reporting (MNR) and disclosure of HIV status as an area of interest for policymakers and government officials. Much of this resulted from a March meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) health ministers, at which they decided to re-examine their approaches to confidentiality and mandatory named reporting. As part of this effort, the Center has begun production of a survey on notification and reporting laws worldwide. In addition, Center staff have been working with various groups in the southern African region and with UN partners on appropriate responses. Sofia Gruskin also delivered a talk at the Center for Applied Legal Studies (CALFS) at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, on questions about and approaches to MNR policies in different regions of the world. The talk was well received by the activists, academics, and policymakers from the region in attendance. Operationalizing Cairo and Beijing: A Training Initiative in Gender and Reproductive Health. This leadership training initiative, conducted in partnership with the World Health Organization and the Women’s Health Project, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, has created pilot courses in six countries worldwide and will produce a global curriculum next year. Center staff taught in the South Africa course again this May, marking the third year that the course was refined and taught in this region. The course will also be taught in Kenya, Australia, Argentina, China, and Egypt later this year. Sofia Gruskin opened the course on behalf of the Center, HSPH, and the Coordinating Committee. She taught the reproductive rights module, which included sessions on the following topics: Human Rights Instruments in Health Advocacy
The course went extremely well. The participants were all at high levels of responsibility for reproductive health and had excellent experience to draw from in course sessions. The Global Coordinating Committee continues to plan for a November meeting to prepare for the Regional Evaluation Workshop (REW) and to begin structuring the final global curriculum. In this period, Bellagio, Italy was confirmed as the site for this meeting. The REW, to take place in February 2000, will be held in Heidelberg, Germany. Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP) Network In this period the MAP Secretariat was officially transferred to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, which will host it for the remainder of the year. Preparations are beginning for a MAP meeting to be held in conjunction with the Malaysia regional AIDS conference. Dissemination of Information Health and Human Rights Journal Preparations continued for the next two issues of the journal. Vol. 4, No. 1 will appear in July. This mixed issue covers topics ranging from tuberculosis in prisons to the health and human rights of a Peruvian indigenous group. The issue also includes two extensive bibliographies on health and human rights and an editorial by Sofia entitled "The Growing Preeminence of Human Rights." This period was spent in extensive editing and copyediting in dialogue with authors contributing to this issue. Vol. 4, No. 2, to appear in December, will be a special theme issue on reproductive rights. This issue promises to be extremely exciting, as it has been planned to coincide with the culmination of the five-year review of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development. Among the contributors is Nafis Sadik, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNFPA. In this period, authors from various regions and disciplines were approached to ensure high-quality contributions. Also in this period, letters were sent out to all subscribers informing them of the change in publication frequency and the decision to include a thematic issue and a mixed issue in each volume. We have received several very positive letters in reply, and subscribers appear to be content with this change. Fundraising for the journal remained a priority. We are exploring a number of options both with the HSPH development office and on our own. Health and Human Rights Reader Health and Human Rights: A Reader, edited by Jonathan Mann, Sofia Gruskin, George Annas, and Michael Grodin, has already sold nearly 2000 copies. Center staff continued to publicize the book at conferences and via e-mail announcements. Reviews of the book are scheduled to appear in The Lancet and several other publications. AIDS, Health and Human Rights: An Action Kit This handbook, to be published jointly by the FXB Center and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, is a companion volume to AIDS, Health and Human Rights: An Explanatory Manual. The outline for the handbook has been redone and approved by both institutions. A meeting was held in late April with the Red Cross to arrange for continued work and collaboration on this project. A draft is anticipated for early summer, and publication for the end of this calendar year. Research Enhancing HIV/AIDS Care Initiative This project is jointly carried out by the Harvard AIDS Institute, the FXB Center, other entities within Harvard, and counterpart institutions in Brazil, Senegal, Thailand, and South Africa. Working with FXBC, ECI project members have been developing a conceptual framework on how to assess, plan for, and evaluate care for people living with HIV/AIDS, which includes human rights and gender-sensitive approaches. In April, meetings were held with the ECI Thailand team, which is conducting an overall situation analysis of community-based HIV/AIDS care in northern Thailand. FXB Center and ECI staff also attended a satellite meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, sponsored jointly by the ECI, UNAIDS/WHO, and the Thai National AIDS Program at the Ministry of Public Health, in conjunction with the Thai National Conference on HIV/AIDS. This two-day satellite meeting, entitled "Community Based Care of PWHA: Lessons Learned from Thailand and Future Perspectives," which brought together delegates from all over Southeast Asia, included a day of presentations and group work on goals for improvements in community-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS. A number of fruitful conversations were held with academics and representatives from other NGOs on integration of human rights concepts into their work. In May, FXB Center and ECI staff met with individuals in KwaZulu, Natal, to discuss formation of the South Africa team. In Durban, they visited clinics and met with providers of home-based care in order to begin to determine team members and the specific focus of their HIV/AIDS care research project. FXBC has hired Kathy Shapiro, a former HSPH student, to work with ECI staff and the Senegal team. This team is conducting an overall assessment of HIV/AIDS care throughout Senegal, which will include an economic analysis of care, as well as attention to human rights. ECI staff traveled to Senegal in May to begin to support the team’s efforts there. Communications with the Brazilian team have continued to prove fruitful. Center staff are working with them to ensure integration of human rights and gender in their research work, which is focused on two topics: (1) the factors that influence specific health care services offered to women living with HIV through the public health services in São Paulo and Santos, and (2) individual and programmatic determinants of care use by pregnant women who are infected with HIV. Plans are under way for a meeting in July with the research team. WHO Research Agenda in the Area of Human Rights as They Relate to Health Plans for a research project on reproductive rights as they relate to reproductive health, a joint effort of the FXB Center and the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO, continue. Changes in WHO funding and structures have led to a reformulation of plans for this work. Also in this period, meetings were held with representatives from the Child Health and Development division (which, along with the Department of Reproductive Health and Research, falls into the WHO Family Health Cluster) on future possibilities for collaboration. In addition, a productive meeting was held in this period with Dr. I. C. Herrell, who is responsible for human rights at WHO. Study on National and International Funding of National AIDS Programs The study Level and Flow of National and International Resources for the Response to HIV/AIDS, 1996–1997, conducted jointly with UNAIDS, was published in this quarter. It has been distributed to faculty and others within HSPH and is posted on the UNAIDS web site. Linkages and Partnership Consortium for Health and Human Rights The Consortium continues to meet regularly. In the 1999–2000 academic year, activities will focus on informing student groups in U.S. medical schools and schools of public health about linkages between health and human rights and how to be involved in health and human rights work. Possible activities include holding the second annual Physicians for Human Rights East Coast student conference on health and human rights at Harvard University or Boston University, as well as sending targeted mailings to student groups and others around the country. UNAIDS In this period, Center staff helped UNAIDS to prepare a presentation for the eleventh meeting of the chairs of the human rights treaty bodies. This presentation focused on the efforts of the treaty bodies to integrate HIV into their work and on the efforts by UNAIDS to integrate human rights into their work, both globally and within countries. A separate set of discussions were also held with the Committee on the Rights of the Child on joint efforts to integrate HIV into their work, which included an official presentation to the Committee. In addition, the umbrella contract with UNAIDS was finalized and signed, and work begun, during this period. Projects agreed upon in the contract include:
Negotiations are nearly completed for the following projects:
Karen Plafker, a former student and professional in both human rights and public health, formally agreed to join the Human Rights Program full-time as of September 1 in order to work concretely on these projects. Center staff participated in a series of meetings in June to begin preparations for redesigning the UNAIDS Global AIDS Strategy, in which human rights will play a fundamental role. The global strategy project is due to extend over the next five years. Center staff also participated in a three-day international meeting at UNAIDS on the topic of Ethical Considerations in International Trials of HIV Preventative Vaccines. Participants worked toward formulating a consensus statement to be published as recommendations on standards of care for individuals who are research subjects in HIV-related research. Fourth International Conference on Home and Community Care for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS Sofia Gruskin will serve on the ethics and human rights subcommittee of the program planning committee for the Fourth International Conference on Home and Community Care for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS (Paris HIV 99), to be held in Paris on December 5–8, 1999. Preliminary work has begun on the conference, which is designed to bring together people living with HIV and AIDS, front-line caregivers, and delegates from international and nongovernmental organizations. Amnesty International The FXB Center continues to engage in a number of activities with Amnesty International. Sofia Gruskin continues her involvement as a member of the Board of Directors and was recently elected ombudsperson for the organization. Saving Lives in the Midst of Conflict Sofia Gruskin is serving on the Scientific Committee of a high-level international conference entitled Saving Lives in the Midst of Conflict: From Humanitarian Action toward Humanizing Government Action, sponsored by Médecins du Monde, to be held in Paris in early July 1999. She attended a working session of the Scientific Committee in May to discuss the goals and objectives of this conference. At HSPH and Harvard The HSPH Working Group on Women, Gender and Health (WGH) continues to meet monthly. Current attention is focused on linking with other initiatives to bring attention to women’s health and to gender in the school and the larger Harvard community. Association François-Xavier Bagnoud Sofia Gruskin was pleased to meet and visit in Lutry with Jean Hoefliger, Executive Director of the AFXB about areas of common interest and the future relations between the FXB Center and AFXB. Multimedia Web Page The Center continues to maintain and update its web page at the Human Rights Internet site. A significant content update neared completion in this period. FXB Center Seminar Series The Seminar Series presented three speakers during this period. On April 8, Michael Grodin of the Boston University School of Public Health spoke on "Health and Human Rights in the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Nazi Doctors, Racial Hygiene, Murder and Genocide." On April 29, Bonnie Shepard of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies spoke on "Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Citizen Participation in Peruvian Health Care Services: A Case Study from Four Cities." On May 3, Rakesh Rajani of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies gave a talk entitled "Children Are Vulnerable to HIV Because They Are Not Political: Lessons from Tanzania." These talks were well received and brought in students and faculty from within the school as well as outside participants. The Library of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center Many students used the library during this period, and organizational work continued. Students have expressed appreciation for the materials available in the library, many of which are not available in other parts of the school. Administration Daniel Tarantola Becomes Visiting Lecturer and Center Associate Daniel Tarantola was appointed as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Population and International Health and as an Associate of the Center. He will provide input into the Center's work on an ongoing basis, as well as advice to the Center on project-related issues including global policy on HIV/AIDS. Database Management Plans were begun and work initiated toward a major revamping of the journal subscriber database and general mailing database. Although it will take a substantial amount of work in the coming months, the integrated database will be significantly easier to maintain and use once completed. Financial Systems In this period, Center staff prepared to convert to new university-wide financial systems to be brought online on July 1. Copyright
© 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.
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