Alec Irwin

Alec Irwin is an ethicist and public health policy analyst whose primary areas of work include: (1) HIV/AIDS policy; (2) the underlying social and political determinants of health; and (3) human-rights based approaches to health. After completing a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Irwin taught for four years as an Assistant Professor at Amherst College. In 2002, Irwin left Amherst to work full time under Dr. Jim Kim at the Boston-based health charity Partners In Health and subsequently at the World Health Organization, Geneva. In 2003, as a member of the Transition Team for incoming WHO Director-General LEE Jong-wook, Irwin contributed to the preparation of the new Director-General’s global health leadership agenda. Subsequently, Irwin accepted an offer to remain at WHO in the Department of Equity, Poverty and Social Determinants of Health (EIP/EQH), where he served as a member of the technical secretariat of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. While at WHO, Irwin was a principal writer on two World Health Reports: WHR 2003: Shaping the future, and WHR 2004: HIV/AIDS: Changing history. He was also a member of the Task Force which drafted WHO's eleventh General Programme of Work (GPW), the organization's principal long-range planning document, covering the period 2007-2015. Irwin contributed in particular to drafting the sections of the GPW dealing with health equity, the social determinants of health and an ethical framework for global public health. Irwin was a co-editor of and contributor to the book Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor (2000). Through a series of regional case studies and thematic chapters, the book explored the impact of recent patterns of global economic and political change on the health of poor people. Irwin’s 2003 book Global AIDS: Myths and Facts, written with Joyce Millen and Dorothy Fallows, continues to enjoy frequent course adoptions in academic institutions and has been translated into Spanish and Japanese.