Invitation to participants
January 9, 2004
An Invitation to Attend
PUBLIC HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF AIDS
An International Seminar hosted by
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
The Open Society Institute, George Soros Foundation
April 7, 8 and 9, 2004
The Mount Washington Conference Center—Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has taught us the central role of human rights, political will, and civil society in HIV prevention and AIDS care. Many of the painful failures of AIDS have been political failures. Yet some of the most profound and effective social change movements internationally have bridged AIDS activism and human rights efforts. The tools of modern public health can serve both HIV/AIDS and human rights efforts in potent and innovative partnerships. This seminar will bring together HIV/AIDS activists, human rights advocates and public health researchers to explore new approaches to addressing HIV/AIDS and human rights. Presenters will be asked to submit chapters for a planned book “Human Rights and Public Health in the AIDS Era,” to be edited by Chris Beyrer, Julie Stachowiak and Hank Pizer. All participants are asked to bring their insights, ideas, and commitment.
The seminar will focus on three primary geographic areas of concern: Burma and her border regions; Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States; and China. In all three regions, HIV/AIDS epidemics have developed in contexts of chronic human rights violations, and in all three, HIV/AIDS responses have the potential to lead to important gains for human rights and civil rights more broadly.
The seminar is by invitation only, and is being kept deliberately small (under 120 participants) to be highly interactive and outcome oriented. The goal is to bring together public health and HIV/AIDS researchers with human rights advocates to strengthen partnerships, build alliances and explore novel approaches to addressing human rights and HIV/AIDS issues in real world settings.
The agenda will include several case studies which will allow for in-depth exploration of several key areas of concern. This will be followed by cross-cutting issues oriented sessions, relevant to some, or all, of the case studies. Finally, there will be a number of sessions focused on novel methods and approaches which could shed light on the issues explored in the case studies and cross cutting sections.
Planned Sessions:
I. Case Studies
Burma: Refugees, internally displaced persons, political crises and HIV/AIDS
China: Stalled Responses and AIDS
Russia and the CIS: Rights violations against drug users and the spread of HIV
The Brazilian Model: Building human rights considerations into HIV/AIDS programming
II. Cross-cutting Sessions
Trafficking and the sex industry
The rights of drug users to drug treatment, prevention services and HIV/AIDS care
Sexual minorities
Prison systems and the structural denial of HIV prevention services
Gender, Women’s Rights, and HIV
III. Methods: Bringing new tools of public health research and investigation to human rights
Population level assessments of right violations and health
Molecular tools: the uses of HIV subtyping
Qualitative methods
Developing denominators
Scientific data and human rights advocacy
Seminar Information
Reduced rate rooms are available at the Mount Washington Conference Center, the meeting venue, which is conveniently located in the city of Baltimore. The organizers are supporting a limited number of invited participants from developing countries, Russia, and the CIS to attend the seminar. These individuals will be contacted directly by Molly McHugh, Fogarty AITRP Senior Program Coordinator.
*Attached to this invitation:
1. Registration Form which all participants MUST complete
2. Venue Information
3. Hotel Reservation Form for booking accommodations
*If you are unable to open these attachments, please go to our website to download a Word version of these documents.
For updated information: www.jhsph.edu/FogartyAIDS/PHHR
For specific contacts: Molly McHugh, Symposium Coordinator
E-mail:
Phone: +011-410-955-8010
This invitation is non-transferable
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