Fall Events, News + More

FALL 2021 NEWSLETTER

Dear Colleagues,

As you may have read in recent news, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Director Dr. Mary T. Bassett as Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

Dr. Bassett joined the FXB Center in 2018, following four years of service as New York City’s health commissioner. During her time at the FXB Center, Dr. Bassett strengthened the Center’s focus on structural racism both domestically and abroad, including a recently announced racial justice program. Dr. Bassett is a sought-after public health expert and has appeared in various media outlets and publications throughout the pandemic.

Dr. Bassett will take a leave of absence starting in December 2021 to serve in this role. Dr. Natalia Linos will lead the FXB Center during Dr. Bassett’s leave. Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, the FXB Center’s Research Director, will continue to lead other major Center initiatives, including the Forced Migration and Child Protection Programs.

Dr. Linos is a social epidemiologist and the Executive Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard. She has over 15 years of experience working at the global and local levels on some of the most pressing public health challenges of our time: from climate change to systemic racism. Since 2019, she has helped build a new research area for the FXB Center focused on racial justice. Along with Dr. Bassett, she co-leads the two largest programs in this area, namely to create an actionable field of scholarship on structural racism and health and make the public health case for reparations. These efforts build on their work together, including at the New York City Health Department and research on the social, legal and political determinants of health. Prior to her role at Harvard, Natalia worked at the United Nations for over a decade in diverse roles.

The FXB Center congratulates Drs. Bassett and Linos on their new roles. As we approach fall, we look forward to this transition and welcome you to visit our webpage to learn more about our upcoming events and ongoing work.

FXB EVENTS

On Sept. 21, 2021, the FXB Center hosted “Anti-Racism in Public Health Policies, Practice, and Research,” a virtual symposium. One of the FXB Center’s latest core initiatives focuses on unpacking and addressing structural racism and health in the U.S. and other parts of the globe. The goal of the FXB Center is to deepen the knowledge base and fill gaps in content and methodology, while ensuring that research and evidence is responsive to community needs and informs policymaking.

This symposium launched FXB's racial justice initiative and a series of conversations and research on racism as a determinant of health, as a root cause of health inequalities, and as a health stressor in itself in view of improving data and practice-oriented research and informing policies and practices.

Watch Now

UPCOMING EVENTS

How Understanding U.S. Racism is Relevant to Global Health

In this talk hosted by the Dept. of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Oct. 21, Dr. Mary T. Bassett will discuss how the year 2020 saw a new phrase structural racism enter the broader public discourse. COVID-19 swept the globe and so did mass protests at the public execution of George Floyd. Not only was the world horrified at the gruesome spectacle, the danger of state violence to radicalized groups resonated from Cape Town to Rio to London and beyond. Dr. Bassett will review how the team at FXB has framed structural racism and how dismantling structural racism is allied to the movement to decolonize global health. Visit Event Page

Climate Change, Structural Racism and Organizing for Change

In this FXB Center work-in-progress speaker presentation on Oct. 27, FXB Faculty Affiliates Dr. Gaurab Basu and Dr. Pedja Stojicic will discuss the intersections of climate change, structural racism and health equity. They will further describe the Climate Health Organizing Fellows program, a six-month fellowship that teaches health professionals how to engage in making change by developing community organizing and public narrative skill sets. Visit Event Page

Voices In Leadership: Helen Clark and Mary T. Bassett

Please join us on Oct. 27 for the next conversation in the “Voices in Leadership” series with Helen Clark and Dr. Mary T. Bassett as they will discuss the findings of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness. Visit Event Page

Continuous Trauma: The State of Children’s Health in the Palestinian Territory

On Nov. 1, the FXB Center will host the next virtual event in its Palestine panel series: Continuous Trauma: The State of Children’s Health in the Palestinian Territory. This panel, moderated by FXB’s own Prof. Jacqueline Bhabha, will discuss the impacts of ongoing acute and chronic events that lead to the physical and emotional trauma of children and associated short and long term health consequences. Visit Event Page

Save-the-Date: Human Rights Day

Please save the date for the FXB Center’s Human Rights Day event. On Dec. 10, the Center will host a conversation on “Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective.” The book includes case studies of state injustices from all across the world—from slavery to forced sterilization to widespread atrocities—and interdisciplinary perspectives on the potential impact of reparations. Please check the event page for updates on the program and featured speakers. Visit Event Page

HEALTH & HUMAN RIGHTS JOURNAL

Journal Achieves Its Highest Impact Factor

Health and Human Rights has achieved its highest ever Journal Impact Factor in this year’s index at 1.552. The publishers are delighted at this metric and proud that the journal is such an important platform for the promotion of human rights and health research and critique. A journal impact factor is an index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.

In between its twice yearly issues (June and December), the Journal publishes papers-in-press, viewpoints, blogs, and student essays. This summer has seen a range of human rights issues addressed including the following contributions. Firstly, COVID-19 vaccines and global equity was addressed in a blog entitled “Johnson & Johnson, Vaccine Apartheid, and Human Rights” by A. Kayum Ahmed, Achal Prabhala, Julia Greenberg, Ames Dhai, and Usuf Chikte. The authors examined Johnson & Johnson’s decision to export COVID-19 vaccines manufactured in South Africa and India to Europe, ahead of supplying both countries or their respective continents, and argued this contradicts the company’s publicly declared commitment to widening access to health care and to human rights. A student essay by Aaron Chia explored whether compulsory COVID-19 vaccination is a violation of human rights and concluded “When considering the case law on the legality of interference with specific provisions of the ECHR, it seems possible that a compulsory COVID-19 vaccination can be enforced while still complying with human rights law.”

In a provocative and important viewpoint, two senior researchers based in Kenya are critical of high-income country (HIC) publishers who create barriers to publication by junior researchers from low and middle income countries (LMICs). But in addition to prohibitive publication fees, barriers also arise from what the authors describe as the unequal treatment of LMIC partners in research collaborations, and the power imbalance, which results in research priorities reflecting the interests of HIC, not the needs of LMICs. Full viewpoint by Adelaide M. Lusambili and Constance S. Shumba can be read here.

Health and Human Rights does not charge any publication fees unless authors can cover the costs with an Open Access grant. The forthcoming December issue, to be published on Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), has general papers and two special sections: "Ecological Justice and the Right to Health" and "Health Rights and the Urgency of the Climate Crisis."

If readers would like to receive an email notification each time a new paper, viewpoint, or blog is published on the Health and Human Rights website, please send an email to HHRSubmissions@hsph.harvard.edu with the subject heading "Add me to email alerts" and your name and email address in the message.