Research

Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP)

Overview

Launched in 2019, the Petrie-Flom Center’s work on global health justice seeks to advance theorization of a “right to health” under international and applicable domestic law as well as an understanding of the challenges to using human rights to advance health justice that are rooted in national and global political economies. It includes a Senior Fellowship and affiliated researchers, and convenes public symposia and events as well as policy-relevant research projects done in collaboration with partners at Harvard and around the globe.

GHRP maintains a particular focus on Latin America. Although an extremely diverse region, Latin American countries share high degrees of socio-economic inequality that is refracted in disparities in health status and access to care, and face a series of common challenges. The pandemic highlighted the cumulative effects of transnational determinants of health, including intellectual property regulation, sovereign debt, and multiple waves of austerity on institutional capacity and political economies. As also laid bare during the pandemic, in many countries, political polarization as well as regulatory dysfunction impair the ability to collectively arrive at democratically legitimate decisions regarding health and social policy. Further, the region is unique in how many countries have recognized the right to health autonomously in their constitution or by incorporation through international treaties, or both, and in turn permit individual protection writ actions (amparos, tutelas) to obtain health–related entitlements from courts with relative ease. 

The Project engages in policy and research projects that identify and critically analyze the use of distinct approaches for advancing systemic fairness, including financing, priority-setting, and judicial roles in national health systems, as well as connections between population health and democratic legitimacy more broadly. It also seeks to elevate the voices and perspectives of Latin American scholars and practitioners regarding global health issues arising out of the pandemic and otherwise.

Senior Fellow

Alicia Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin JD MPH PhD is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and a Visiting Professor of Law at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Yamin is also Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Known globally for her trans-disciplinary work in relation to economic and social rights, reproductive justice, the right to health, and the intersections between development paradigms and human rights, Yamin’s career has bridged academia and activism. She has lived in Latin America and East Africa for much of her professional life and worked with local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).

Yamin was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of ten international experts to the Independent Accountability Panel for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health in the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2021). She was the chief consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and drafter of the ‘Technical guidance on the application of a human-rights based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality, “ the first guidance on a ‘human rights-based approach to health’ to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council. Yamin has served on numerous other UN, WHO and other global expert committees. She currently serves on the Lancet Commissions on Global Governanace and Health 2.0 and on Arctic and Northern Health, as well as the WHO Global Advisory Group on Legislating Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance.

Yamin has a long track record in on-the-ground program implementation as well as policy-oriented public health research. She has been the principal investigator on multi-methods, multi-country studies, participated in setting up a maternal health program in Peru, and has evaluated the alignment of health programs with human rights standards and principles on behalf of both national governments and international institutions.

As a specialist in international and comparative law relating to health and sexual and reproductive rights issues, Yamin regularly provides expert testimony to tribunals around the globe, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2011, Yamin was named by the Colombian Constitutional Court as an Independent Expert on the implementation of T-760/08, a major structural judgment that led to significant health system reform In Colombia. She was also the only non-Kenyan appointed to the oversight committee for health matters of the Constitutional Implementation Commission in relation to the 2010 Kenyan Constitution.

From 2009-2015, Yamin served as Chair of the Board of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (Vice-Chair, 2001-08), and continues to serve on the Advisory Council. She is a current and founding member of the Global Health Law Consortium, as well as Senior Associated Researcher and Advisory Board Member of the Centre on Law and Social Transformation. Yamin also sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Bergen Centre on Ethics and Priority Setting (B-CEPS), as well as on the international advisory boards of the RedAAS (Argentine Safe Abortion Access Network) and the Proyecto Mirar (monitoring implementation of Law 27.610, which legalized abortion in Argentina).

Yamin holds Juris Doctor and Master’s in Public Health degrees from Harvard University, and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She has edited and authored over a dozen books and UN reports, as well as close to 200 articles in law, policy and public health/medical journals, in both English and Spanish. Her work has also been translated into French, Korean, Portuguese, and Estonian. A revised and substantially expanded second edition of her most recent monograph, When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, was published by Stanford University Press in 2023. A Spanish edition is forthcoming from the Editorial UniAndes in 2025.

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Scholarship

Publications & Symposia
Events