Health and Human Rights
Vol 13, No 2 (2011)
http://hhrjournal.org/index.php/hhr

Editor’s Note
Paul E. Farmer

A year ago, our departing editorial team wrote that its hope for Health and Human Rights: An International Journal was that it would “increasingly provide a space that bridges the evident gaps that continue to exist between communities of scholars and activists from social medicine, social epidemiology, and human rights [law].” We have taken our colleagues’ wisdom to heart and spent much time this year working to realize this mission. As our former publisher Dr. Jim Yong Kim stated when HHR became an open access publication, the journal aims to achieve “a structural change in how, where, and by whom knowledge about health action and human rights is produced and used.”  For this reason, we remain committed to making sure our publication is available to as wide a readership as possible. At the beginning of 2012, we will introduce a rolling publication system to allow readers to view papers online as soon as they have been finalized following peer review. We hope this will enable academics and teachers and others to read, cite, and use research and commentary in their work more quickly than previously possible.

To engage scholars, practitioners, students, and activists in the health and human rights movement, we have also expanded the journal’s use of social media. We encourage readers to become writers by contributing to our blog (http://www.hhropenforum.org); we also invite you to follow the journal on Twitter (@healthhumrights).

The potential of rights-based approaches in global health work is of mounting interest within academic communities, as evidenced by the increasing number of universities offering courses in this area. Scientific and biomedical journals are also publishing articles on health and human rights with greater frequency. In their literature review published in this issue, Mpinga et al report a threefold increase in the number of papers addressing health and human rights in the decade ending in 2008. The most frequently explored topics include health systems in resource-poor settings, mental health, HIV/AIDS, and reproductive health.

This issue of Health and Human Rights reports on diverse rights violations and injustices among marginalized populations around the globe—from prisoner-patients to labor migrants to those without potable water…

…The right to health should serve as a guiding principle for health care practitioners and policy makers and all those who seek to redress social inequities around the globe. It is not the only framework out there, true, but it serves as a bulwark against the mistreatment and abuse that remains, today, far too prevalent.