Health Justice in the Americas

April 14, 2022
Health Justice in the Americas

Since 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has built up an unprecedented body case law on the right to health. Yet as Alicia Ely Yamin, GHELI Senior Scholar in Residence, notes, the Latin American region has the “steepest socioeconomic inequalities in the world” despite its “broad constitutionalization of health rights.”

Yamin moderated a recent panel discussion, “Health Justice in the Americas: The Role of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,” which drew perspectives among scholars who have been directly involved as experts in one or more of these cases. The cases discussed focused on access to emergency care, HIV treatment, and health services for prison inmates; informed consent in physical and mental health care; and State duties to regulate private health providers and insurance companies.

The panel was sponsored by the Global Health and Rights Project, a collaboration between the Incubator and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health and Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and the Mexico program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Read the full story in The Harvard Crimson.