Evaluating essential health packages from a human rights perspective

Many countries at all levels of development have formulated an essential health package, sometimes also referred to as a health benefit plan or a health benefit basket. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), essential health packages (EHPs) are “health service interventions that are considered important and that society decides should be provided to everyone.” Although EHPs are not often formulated from an explicitly human rights perspective, since they are conceptualized as a guaranteed minimum of health services, much like core health obligations, they have obvious human rights import. This article evaluates the principles from which the plans are developed, the content of the packages, and the experience of countries seeking to implement them from a human rights perspective. In the process, it seeks to gain greater clarity about the health service requirements of the right to health.     

Is the Tobacco Settlement Constitutional?

In August 2005, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit in Louisiana challenging the legality of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). The suit alleges that the MSA, under which the states receive monetary payments and the four major tobacco companies are insulated from price competition, violates the Compact Clause and other provisions of the U.S. Constitution. This lawsuit threatens to unravel of one of the most significant opportunities to improve public health in United States history. We consider the merits of the lawsuit, the problems with the MSA that it highlights, and the potential consequences of the suit for public health.     

A policy critique of HIV/AIDS and demobilisation

The objective of this paper is to draw out and encourage debate on the relationship between HIV and the policy challenges that it poses for security. It explores how demobilisation programmes need to incorporate a development perspective, bringing together public health practitioners and security experts, in order to address the pandemic and the future security needs of Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. It is hoped that integrating two very different disciplines, public policy and public health, will mark the beginning of attempts to establish some practical guidelines for policymakers and field practitioners that focus on prevention. Most important, the paper makes an urgent request for a cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral approach to tackling such a complex problem as HIV and the military. Development practitioners once shunned any working relationship with armed forces or defence ministries, but it is impossible now to avoid these institutions in countries with high rates of HIV/AIDS in the security sector.     

Reproductive health policy‐makers: Comparing the influences of international and domestic institutions on abortion policy

Do policies protecting women's rights correspond with norm change at the state level or the level of international institutions? We examine this question, comparing domestic and international institutional activity in correlation with reproductive health policy change, specifically, abortion access policy. At the domestic level, we examine female legislators and policies set to encourage gender equality, namely, electoral gender quotas. In the international arena, our theory distinguishes regional from international inter‐governmental bodies. Original data with measurement innovations introduced here—including the Comparative Abortion Policy Index (CAPI1 and CAPI2)—are analysed for over 150 countries for close to two decades. We find a heretofore‐overlooked relationship between international entities and reproductive health. Gender quotas, however, do not correspond with the general association between female representation and pro‐women policy. When researchers and policy‐makers consider gender quotas to promote women's rights, they may be advised to encourage female political participation through more organic means.