PHR Student Blog

PHR’s National Conference will take place on Saturday, February 20th, at Boston University Medical School. This year’s conference, Health and Human Rights Education in 2010, will give you the chance to meet other leaders in the area of human rights education (both students and faculty), hear inspiring speakers, present ideas at the Education Innovations Expo, build your capacity to influence curriculum decisions, and design a concrete plan to help your school incorporate human rights into medical and public health education.

Take a look at the Conference agenda to see the day’s offerings.

The conference is a chance to consider the daunting tasks that confronts physicians, nurses and public health specialists: building — and often rebuilding — health systems that are accessible to all; fighting infectious pandemics like HIV/AIDS; preventing and treating disease; providing humanitarian relief to people facing natural or man-made disasters; and more.

The last 20 years have shown the world that brilliant bio-medical advances cannot alone bring health to the world’s poorest people. Medicine must go hand-in-hand with human rights to eliminate health disparities and ensure a healthy population.

The recent earthquake in Haiti highlights this challenge. There are numerous reasons why a country might not be prepared to mitigate or respond to the destruction of an earthquake. Health professionals who are eager to respond to the urgent needs of the survivors must also be aware of the political, cultural, and economic context of the situation.

Health professionals are then confronted with the question: is this a human rights issue? Doctors, nurses, public health researchers and practitioners, and other professionals who have dealt with this question in the classroom will be more prepared to address it in their careers. (No need to wait until you are a health professional to help Haiti — take action for Haiti now!)

This year’s Conference aims to change the paradigm of medicine to one which embraces human rights by empowering student leaders to introduce human rights into their school’s curriculum. The Conference is the first of its kind to solely focus on bringing students and faculty together to discuss how to integrate human rights into medical education. This jam-packed day will serve as a springboard for future health and human rights initiatives and help students make lasting change at their university and in their profession.

The deadline to apply is January 20th — apply today!