30 Years of Human Rights

The pandemic has proven that public health services, like those for mental health and gender-based violence, continue to be overlooked and under-resourced, proving the need for building a stronger capacity for these services that can withstand unique situations like these. In the words of Executive Director Peter Navario, “This pandemic moment underscores why HealthRight’s work of strengthening health systems is so important, and how ensuring public health is foundational to economic development and security.”

Since its founding, HealthRight has served communities around the world with the purpose of making health a human right. Thank you for celebrating 30 years of serving marginalized populations with us!

While mergers like these are exceedingly rare in the nonprofit sector, it was an obvious decision for HealthRight and PCAF. “[PCAF is] a perfect cultural fit in terms of our shared focus on improving the health of the most vulnerable populations through community-driven solutions,” said Peter Navario, Executive Director of HealthRight. Liz and Steve Alderman agreed, “Merging with HealthRight will allow us to deliver our evidence-based model of care more efficiently and effectively to more people for many years to come.”

PCAP remains active today, integrating mental health solutions across HealthRight’s programs. 

By its end in 2018, TeacherCorps increased participating teachers’ knowledge of child development and symptoms of violence, reducing violence against children at schools, as well as significantly reducing stress in teachers and school staff. Students showed more positive social and emotional behaviors, as well as improvements in cognitive function and school attendance. Additionally, there was a significant increase in positive parenting practices and reduction in parent violence.

A friend of hers recommended she visit a HealthRight drop-in center, where she could get assistance. After arriving, Tania was able to get the guidance she needed to improve her care for her son and his needs. The drop-in center staff helped her find a job and become more independent. After rebuilding her relationship with her mother, Tania moved back in while she started working until she was able to save up enough money to move out into a new home. Because of the drop-in center’s resources, Tania was able to become more independent and the gain confidence in herself that she needed to take care of herself and her son.

On February 29, 2012, the residents and staff at the Kapenguria District Hospital held a dance and ululation to celebrate the opening of the 3rd kiror. Attendees included the District Commission, the Minister of Health and staff, local NGOs, village chiefs, community health workers and members, along with HealthRight staff.

Utilizing the opportunity, HealthRight distributed insecticide-treated nets to pregnant women and households with children under five at the event. Jennifer Olsen, Director of HealthRight’s African Program at the time, urged community members to take advantage of the kiror and work together to maintain it, so that it could provide services and assistance for a long time. The District Minister of Health thanked HealthRight staff for their work and affirmed the government’s commitment to supporting HealthRight’s activities in West Pokot.

The Smile of the Sun Center was created by HealthRight International, the Ha Noi Women’s Union, Bright Futures Network, and Ngoc Lam Pagoda. As a community center, it provided support and advocacy for children and families living with HIV/AIDS. The two Smile of the Sun Center locations in Hanoi offered services including counseling, tutoring, meal distribution, and referral to support services. Efforts like this, which advocate for equal access to health services and reduction of stigma faced by people with HIV, were critical in ending the epidemic.

The Partnership Framework outlined a five year joint strategic framework for cooperation between the U.S. Government, the Vietnamese Government and other partners to combat HIV/AIDS through service delivery, policy reforms and coordinated financial commitments. The U.S. Government’s commitment to help Vietnam develop and fund solutions to the HIV epidemic through the Partnership Framework was important in the fight against HIV.

Since joining, Dr. Lee has used her passion and clinical skills to assist approximately 60 asylum seekers and other vulnerable immigrants to achieve safety and stability. Over the last 30 years, the HRC has trained over 1,500 clinicians and assisted over 6,000 survivors of torture and other human rights abuses from 140 countries.

To meet local healthcare needs during the interim, HealthRight implemented three one-day medical camps in remote communities, screening and treating 372 patients who had little access to hospitals or clinics.

The most visible and well-received activity was the community health education program. HealthRight trained 48 community health volunteers, consisting of 4-person teams in 12 tsunami-affected regions. Initially, these teams led weekly community health workshops, providing information on primary health care, hygiene, and sanitation to 2,000 families in their respective communities.

After the success of this program, the volunteers attended a 2-day training on first aid and returned to share their knowledge with their communities. In the end, they reached over 3,000 families and distributed as many first aid kits and pamphlets.

By 2006, HealthRight had completed 21 months of work, the hospital renovations provided improved services to over 138,000 residents, and the community health volunteers had given thousands of families the knowledge and skills necessary to improve their health in the long term.

HealthRight launched an in-depth assessment in 2004 that identified gaps in service coverage and the quality of care. Through this, HealthRight was able to develop relationships with local partners and establish a field office to launch full operations. Samjhana Kachhyapathi, pictured, was a health coordinator who supported survivors of trafficking and violence. HealthRight, partnered with UNICEF, launched trainings to teach healthcare providers and community leaders how to diagnose survivors of human trafficking and prevent future abuse. When asked about trainings, Samjhana mentioned that she “began to make a network of people around me who can assist me in identifying and prosecuting abuse, as well as preventing it from happening to more children.”

In the following years, HealthRight worked to strengthen the capacity of the health sector to serve more children and provide effective services to survivors of abuse and violence.

These migrants were disproportionately affected by reproductive and child health problems, including high rates of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases, complicated pregnancies and septic abortions, HIV, and sexual violence. Access to health care was extremely limited for migrants, due to poverty, high mobility, and language barriers. Travel to a clinic carried a risk of arrest and deportation, sexual violence, and economic extortion at the hands of Thai immigration police. While the Thai public health system extended some prevention services to the migrant population, such as malaria control and immunization, its limited financial and human resources made it difficult to support the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach migrants.

After assessing the human rights concerns on a 19-day field mission in 2001, HealthRight began responding to the issue with local partnerships in 2002. Together with Mae Tao Clinic and the Thai Ministry of Public Health, HealthRight developed the Partnership for Migrant Health to increase access to health services for the more than one million migrants living as unrecognized refugees in Thailand. HealthRight also worked to build the capacity of local NGOs by creating an Adolescent Reproductive Health Networking Group which trained staff in needs assessment, monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy. In addition, HealthRight facilitated the implementation of the first HIV test counseling and follow-up treatment to pregnant migrant women under the Thai national program.

HealthRight and the Partnership also established Migrant Health Working Groups of Thai and migrant health providers in Tak Province to assist in the development of targeted, culturally appropriate health education, outreach and services for reproductive and child health prevention and care, including prevention of unsafe abortion and HIV/AIDS. This was HealthRight’s final project in Thailand, and closed in April 2004.

To address this, HealthRight, in partnership with Médecins du Monde France, launched a three-year maternal and child health project in the Mai Châu District. At the time, the Mai Châu District had a population of 47,000, and more than 70% were ethnic minorities. The rates of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections were far larger than the national average and in more remote areas of the District, more than half the children under five suffered from malnutrition. The focus of the program was community-based health care access, disease prevention, and maternity and infant health.

In 2000, HealthRight opened a field office and hired local and international staff to run the project. Staff members identified ten communities for project intervention, and assessed the needs of the residents. Through this, they were able to develop services to improve the clinical skills of village health workers and recruit more women and minorities into the health system.

Among those impacted by HealthRight’s work was Vang A. Giong, a 27-year-old Hmong man. Siding with the United States during the Vietnam War increased the discrimination against the Hmong people, giving them little access to healthcare. Giong attended a three-month training course and was able to take his knowledge back to his hometown, where he taught mothers to prevent common childhood diseases, counseled pregnant women to undergo examinations, provided first aid services, and mobilized villagers to participate in national health programs for better family planning and nutrition. In this way, Giong was prepared to help his community begin to reverse the discrimination that has wreaked havoc on their lives for decades. He helped build a healthier future for the Hmong.

In total, this program improved the health and lives of approximately 16,000 women and children in rural communities in Mai Châu.

During the armed conflict of 1998-99, HealthRight implemented three emergency relief projects in Macedonia and Kosovo that brought food and medical assistance to over 150,000 refugees and internally displaced persons. Within days of the signing of the peace accords, HealthRight returned to Kosovo and commenced a program to rebuild the maternal health care infrastructure. HealthRight also developed three long-term projects to serve the Kosovar population – the De-institutionalization of Kosovar Children Project, the Health Promotion Project, and the Tuberculosis Control Project.

Recognizing the insecurity felt by many ethnic minorities in the post-war Kosovo, HealthRight worked hard to include Serbs and Roma in its programs, and to develop programs targeting these groups. One of the most successful of these programs was a reproductive health education program directed at the Roma community, which addressed some of the needs of the most excluded ethnic group in all of Europe.

HealthRight sent its first volunteer doctors to Kosovo to vaccinate children against polio in 1992, remaining for years to undertake an extensive anti-tuberculosis program, provide essential care to mothers and infants, and promote public health education. As a prominent non-governmental organization addressing TB in Kosovo, HealthRight took a lead role in cooperation with the World Health Organization in developing a TB control strategy for Kosovo.

By 1996, HealthRight had already been working to combat TB in Kosovo, the number one health problem in the region, for two years. HealthRight worked to upgrade TB diagnostic laboratories, distributed much-needed drugs, and began providing public education on health care and recognizing and treating symptoms of TB. Additionally, HealthRight physicians provided anti-TB care that included screening and drug treatment, provided vaccinations for children, and trained clinicians on the international standards of treatment for TB.

“After two years of work in Kosovo, I see the early signs of progress, gradual improvement in health care accessibility, and movement toward a reconciliation that can bring peace and a healing of bodies and spirit to the hardened and disheartened people of this troubled region.” – Lisa Adams, MD, speaking about the work of HealthRight’s TB Vaccination Team in 1996.

To promote the ability of indigenous patients to understand, choose, and consent to medical care, HealthRight and HSC set up an ambitious training program for a group of indigenous women to become nurse auxiliaries. This project was the first in HealthRight’s long history of strengthening local health systems, by training health workers to support their own communities.

The curriculum included physiology, basic nursing techniques, pediatric nursing, maternal and child health, and public health – as well as basic literacy, a particularly pressing need. The program involved indigenous women, ages 15 to 22, who agreed to work for the hospital in exchange for room, board, vocational training, and primary and/or junior high school-level education. At the end of their training, the women received official certificates from the Mexican government, authorizing them to work as auxiliary nurses throughout the country.

Coming from the very same families as the patients of HSC, these young nurses became an essential part of the hospital. Along with the services they provided to others, they were educated and empowered, and are now part of the improvement of their communities’ long-term prospects.

Sor Maite Galvan, the Director of HSC at the time, said, “The nurse-auxiliaries are the right hand of the hospital. In addition to the medical services, they do the translation for the indigenous patients, they know the culture, they provide the bridge between the hospital and the patients. The hospital couldn’t work without them.”

Jonathan Mann and several other physicians visited these refugees, conducted interviews, assessed their health, and gathered evidence about their treatment and standard of living. They used these data to lead a lawsuit in Federal Court against the refugees’ detainment, arguing that the conditions in the camps were not conducive to care and that the patients must be brought into the US.

On March 26, 1993, US District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ruled that the refugees would be allowed to enter the US, stating that “the government had to either provide medical treatment for those with the AIDS virus or send them where they could be treated.”

Following a return to Harvard School of Public Health to earn his MPH degree in 1980, Mann began to apply his intellect and skills to forming international strategies for reducing and preventing the spread of AIDS. In 1984, he founded and directed Project SIDA, an AIDS research project based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire), that incorporated epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory components in a collaborative effort of Zairian, US (Centers for Disease Control), and Belgian AIDS researchers. This project, among many accomplishments, showed that HIV could be spread through heterosexual sex but not through mosquito bites.

By 1987, the fear of AIDS had led to inhuman policies across the world. 81 countries had passed laws against people with HIV or risk groups, usually homosexuals and prostitutes. In Germany, a federal judge declared it might be necessary to tattoo and quarantine people with the virus. Cuba was already quarantining AIDS patients. Some Muslim states were jailing “promiscuous” people, and Chinese officials denied the existence of homosexuals, drug users, or prostitutes in the People’s Republic. In the US, President Reagan’s secretary of education, William Bennett, fought Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s plans for frank education about HIV prevention, favoring instead compulsory testing of all hospital patients, marriage license applicants, and immigrants. Quarantine loomed as a very real threat.

Amid this gathering storm, Jonathan Mann led public health authorities to perhaps their finest hour. Impeccably dressed in bow ties, yet with the gritty experience of running Project SIDA, Mann managed to convene more than 100 national ministers of health together in London. There, almost 150 nations signed on to a condom-based, compassionate strategy to slow the spread of AIDS. A few months later, he convinced the World Health Organization to make human rights the core of its anti-HIV strategy. These coups played a crucial role in preventing the wholesale repression of people with the virus.

Mann orchestrated this historic consensus from his new position as director of the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS. At first, recalls Daniel Tarantola, who joined the fledgling endeavor at the beginning, “the program was himself, a secretary, and one typewriter.” Two years later, Mann had rocketed the budget to almost $100 million. His m.o.: hard work, personal modesty, and an eloquence that was at once fiery and logical. “Back at a time when only a few people were screaming” for a humane and effective response, says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “Jonathan was an unbelievably articulate and passionate voice.” Mathilde Krim, founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, adds that Mann persuaded people with “the force of the argument, the morality of behaving a certain way, and the practical usefulness of being ethical and respectful of others. He convinced people.”

Mann’s message: AIDS is a global crisis, in which no person or nation is an island. More important, human rights and public health go hand in hand: “In each society, those people who before HIV/AIDS arrived were marginalized, stigmatized, and discriminated against become those at highest risk of HIV infection… The French have a simple term which says it all: HIV is now becoming a problem mainly for les exclus, the ‘excluded ones’ living at the margin of society.”

His international experiences with AIDS policy brought to his attention the link between human rights and health. He was particularly interested in the effects of health policies on human rights, the health effects of human rights violations, and the inextricable connection between promoting and protecting health and rights.

Seeing a void among the health and human rights organizations in the US, Dr. Mann founded HealthRight – then known as Doctors of the World-USA – in 1990. His aim was to create a unique organization that ran sustainable programs that promote and protect health and human rights in the US and abroad. Drawing from his experiences in the AIDS response, he promoted the idea that health and human rights are inextricably linked. Even 30 years later, this philosophy drives HealthRight’s work and projects.

Jonathan Mann worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others and never shied away from a challenge. Today, his ideals are more important than ever before.

“People say there is no use trying to change the world,” he often said, “but if we don’t try, will it change?”

Portions of this biography were first published in the New York Village Voice and quote Laurie Garrett’s book The Coming Plague.