Profiles

Beth Rivin: Advocate for Human Rights

In her many world travels, pediatrician Beth Rivin, UW research associate professor in the School of Law, has witnessed poverty, deprivation, and hardship. She was in Indonesia after the tsunami that devastated the country to coordinate aid in her role as vice president of the Seattle-based NGO Uplift International. She knows firsthand the face of worldwide suffering.

Ironically, her international experiences have attuned her to the fact that some of the greatest health disparities are in her home country—the world's wealthiest nation. Part of the cause, she observes, is that health is viewed as a commodity in the United States. In other countries, even some of the poorest, health is a right.

Rivin points to Indonesia as an example. She visits the country frequently as program director of the law school's Global Health and Justice Program and in her work with Uplift International. She says, "Indonesia is struggling with poverty and inadequate systems and yet they have a new constitutional amendment that says there is a right to health and well-being. They've acknowledged these concepts and put them into enforceable law. We have a particular challenge in the U.S. because we have never fully recognized international human rights law in the area of economic and social rights."

It wasn't meant to be that way. In FDR's thinking during the early 1940's, Rivin observes, health was intended to be an important part of the economic and social welfare agenda. But it didn't happen. Rivin says, "There is a right to education through grade 12 in this country. But there is no right to access health services. And the disparities have become more of an issue over time."

Rivin is committed to talking about these issues with her students and sensitizing them to the important role of human rights in reducing health disparities, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Rivin teaches a popular multidisciplinary course called Health and Human Rights, and is also instrumental in developing and teaching multidisciplinary courses through the NIH-funded Fogarty Frameworks on Global Health project at the UW. In addition to law students, she works with students in medicine, public health, public affairs, international affairs, business, and other disciplines. Through the Global Health and Justice Program and Uplift International, students have opportunities to work and learn in projects related to health and human rights.

Rivin was always interested in international public health work. She completed two residencies—one in public health and preventive medicine, and one in pediatrics. Similarly, her interests focused dually on looking at patients as individuals and working with populations to improve their health. Over time, however, she saw clearly that biomedical strategies to improve health were not working. Increasingly, she recognized the need to include human rights in all considerations as a mechanism to advocate for injustice in health and for better health for vulnerable populations.

Rivin perceives the need for a national paradigm shift. She says, "People have to understand that we really cannot improve health at the population level or even at the individual health level without addressing inequities of society and the blatant or inadvertent discrimination that occurs."

Rivin says, "International human rights provide us with good standards about equitable access to health information and services for everyone. Most countries except the U.S. have acknowledged the international human right to health and many have adopted this right into national law."

Uplift International is working on a U.S. right-to-health initiative and collaborating with others around the country as well as in Washington State to focus on education and advocacy here.

The Department of Global Health, Rivin says, provides a great opportunity to expose and educate students at all levels in multidisciplinary areas and to think broadly about important issues like human rights, globally and locally. Using the WHO definition of health as physical, mental, and social well being, the department has the potential to take on big issues and to be inclusive. "When you're talking about the world, we need every professional on board," she says.

The Department of Global Health is part of a larger movement. Rivin observes, "I think the Gates Foundation and others have brought to light the big global health picture. Things can be done. We know there are problems and we also know we can do something about the problems. And there's a lot of talk about human rights. There is a growing interest in the intersection of health and human rights and promoting the right to health."

Interview by Marjorie Wenrich