Health and Human Rights
Participants of the December 2007 World AIDS Day Conference, organized by the Rapoport Center working group on Health and Human Rights.
Panelists Neville Hoad (far right), Kellie Buenrostro and Emily Ybarra discuss "Stereotypes, Stigmas and Shame about HIV/AIDS" at the World AIDS Day Conference. Professor Hoad (English Dept.) leads the Rapoport Center Working Group on Health and Human Rights and also sits on the Center's Steering Committee.
The Rapoport Center's Working Group on Health and Human Rights began as an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students interested in fostering a university-wide conversation on the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. It has since expanded its focus to other health and human rights issues. Recognizing the enormous diversity of scholarly knowledge projects needed to make sense of the pandemic, the health and human rights working group is committed to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary modes of inquiry.
On December 1, 2007, the Working Group held the University's first annual World AIDS Day Conference to heighten awareness about the impact of the AIDS pandemic on minority and impoverished populations in the U.S. and abroad. Speakers were drawn from the university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, Austin HIV/AIDS community organizations and student activist groups. December 2008 marked the second annual World AIDS Day Conference at UT. Themes included governmental responses to HIV/AIDS; NGO and civil society responses to
HIV/AIDS; and sex and public health.
The event also featured a keynote address by Twegise Jackson
Kaguri, Director of the Nyaka School Initiative in Uganda. In 2009, the third annual conference explored aspects of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic that concern issues of public memory, human rights, documentation, and representation (see conference schedule).
As part of its committment to making and strengthening connections among the diverse faculty and students invested in health and human rights issues, the working group organizes panels for other related conferences on campus. In spring 2008, working group faculty gave presentations at student organizations' events, including the National Conference of FACE AIDS. The Rapoport Center's spring 2009 conference, Human Rights at UT: A Dialogue at the intersection of Academics and Advocacy, featured a panel organized by the working group: "Recognizing Health Care as a Human Right and Humanizing Global Economic Policy." The panel featured William Sage (Vice Provost for Health Affairs and Professor Law, UT-Austin Law School); Neville Hoad (Associate Professor of English, UT-Austin); Alejandro Moreno (Associate Director, Internal Medicine Program, UT-Medical Branch Austin Programs); Alexandra B. Nolen (Acting Director of the Center to Eliminate Health Disparities, Associate Director of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center for Training in International Health, UT-Medical Branch); James Wilson (Assistant Professor of History, UT-Austin; and Susannah Sirkin (Deputy Director, International Policy and Physicians for Human Rights). Panelist discussed how global economic policies have imposed restrictions on developing countries that, with limited resources, have come to depend on aid from international agencies to provide domestic health care. Can the idea of access to health care as a human right trump these restrictions?
The working group has also made efforts to locate resources on campus for its initiatives by compiling a list of courses with HIV/AIDS content across the university and researching university library holdings. With a library allocation of $5,000, they have acquired a range of relevant materials on and from sub-Saharan Africa.
If you are interested in joining the working group on health and human rights, please email Professor Neville Hoad.
