Release date: 20-Apr-05

Emory's Institute of Human Rights Receives $230,000 Grant From Gates Foundation

Emory University's Institute of Human Rights has received a $230,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support its international conference "Lessons Learned From Rights-Based Approaches to Public Health" that took place April 14-16.

Nearly 400 public health and development professionals from more than 40 nations gathered at Emory for the three-day conference to explore the application of human rights theory to public health policymaking. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gave the opening session address and the keynote address was given by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

The conference addressed topics such as the impact of war and terrorism on public health, refugee and internally displaced persons, infectious disease control, children's health, racism and health, reparations for human rights abuses, human trafficking and sexual/reproductive health, among many others. Co-sponsors included the World Health Organization, CARE USA, the human rights offices of The Carter Center, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Doctors for Global Health.

The Gates Foundation grant is jointly administered by the Institute of Human Rights and Emory's Office of International Affairs and funded more than 100 scholarship recipients, including many from developing nations, to attend the conference and present their work. The grant also will support a number of post-conference initiatives as well, including a follow-up meeting of key leaders in public health, publication of conference proceedings, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation, and development of an Emory-based online database of health and human rights programs from around the world.

"Gates Foundation support of the conference will allow us to showcase Emory's strengths in the fields of both human rights and public health," said Emory's Vice Provost for International Affairs Holli A Semetko. "The grant will also allow the Institute of Human Rights to become a living resource for sharing knowledge worldwide about rights-based health programming."

"Dignity, equality, nondiscrimination – these are ideals we can all agree upon, no matter what our nations' political attitude is regarding a right to health," said Dabney Evans, executive director of the Institute of Human Rights and conference organizer. "What rights-based approaches allow us to do is embrace these principles, and combine them with effective public health methods and programming."

Conference details can be found at the Institute of Human Rights' web site, http://humanrights.emory.edu.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

Subscribe to News@Emory RSS feeds for automatic updates of the latest news at Emory.

Back