Global Health Action Campaign

About the Global Health Action Campaign

The Global Health Action Campaign aims to establish the right to health as the framework governments use to develop, implement and fund health programs. The right to health is also a means to hold governments accountable for the health of their populations and for meeting their international obligations. Using the skills and expertise of the health professions, the campaign addresses global health issues such as:

• Health workforce and heath systems strengthening
• HIV/AIDS
• Women's health
• Harm reduction

Evolved from PHR's Health Action AIDS Campaign, the Global Health Action Campaign continues the PHR commitment to combating HIV/AIDS and directs the power of our health professional constituency towards addressing a broader set of global health priorities.

Expanding Our Mission

A growing movement in the United States and abroad rejects unnecessary constraints on resources that would pit disease against disease. Needed instead are joint efforts towards developing and fully funding a comprehensive and systemic approach to global health challenges that will lead to effectively and sustainably achieving health targets such as the health-related Millennium Development Goals.

PHR supports, fosters and helps lead this movement through our health professional constituency, our emphasis on the right to health and our accumulated experiences and knowledge. PHR emphasizes poor and marginalized populations, evidence-based approaches, health system strengthening and on other elements of a right to health.

Global Health Action

Grounded in a right to health approach to addressing major challenges and inequalities in global health, This new initiative retains PHR's commitment to fight AIDS, while applying lessons learned from the Health Action AIDS campaign to a broader set of global health priorities.

The Global Health Action campaign continues PHR's strong tradition of mobilizing health professional for research, education and advocacy, and helps ensure that health professionals are at the forefront of US global health policy. PHR's strong relationships with health professional advocacy networks in Africa will help our domestic advocacy on right to health issues—including HIV issues, such as PEPFAR funding and implementation, health workforce and health systems strengthening, harm reduction programs, and women's health initiatives. In our leadership role as chair of the Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative and as a member of the steering committee of the International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights, we promote well-functioning health systems that respond effectively to national and local health priorities.

Global Health Action promotes integrated, equitable and accessible health systems that address complex and interconnected health issues beyond the AIDS epidemic, including the devastating rates of maternal morbidity and mortality in much of the world. Many of the same factors hindering our response to HIV/AIDS also hinder the response to maternal mortality and other significant health disparities: insufficient resources, fragile health systems, severe health worker shortages and lack of attention to the underlying social, cultural and economic determinants of health.

Framing the Campaign: A Right to Health Approach

Tremendous inequity in health exists not only between developed and developing countries but within these settings – between rich and poor, men and women, urban and rural populations, and so on. To achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all, PHR will place human rights, specifically the right to health at the centre of our new campaign.

Global Health Action will emphasize equity, non-discrimination and a constant focus on marginalized populations; participation of those who best understand their own needs; monitoring though the development of indicators and benchmarks; and, accountability to ensure that governments are meeting their obligations and commitments.

The highest attainable standard of physical and mental health requires an equitable health system that includes not only quality medical care, including access to skilled health workers and essential medications, but also access to the underlying determinants of health, such as clean drinking water, adequate sanitation, safe sexual and reproductive health services and comprehensive health information for all, especially for the most marginalized such as injection drug users, women and children. Global Health Action advocates for a right to health approach to health system strengthening and addressing the needs of marginalized populations.

Advancing Global Health

Over the past seven years, PHR's Health Action AIDS Campaign, helped revolutionize the US response to global health and highlighted the powerful role health professionals can play in formulating and mobilizing funding for effective health policies.

Over the last seven years, PHR's Health Action AIDS campaign has:

• Built a network of nearly 8,000 doctors, nurses, and other health professionals and students, to inform and influence US and international policymakers to secure much needed resources for the global HIV/ AIDS fight;
• Advanced policies to address the global health workforce crisis;
• Elevated the importance of effective harm reduction policies around needle/syringe exchange;
• Partnered with health professionals in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda to expand local advocacy capacity; and
• Raised attention on the urgent need to strengthen health systems.

With the successful conclusion of the Health Action AIDS campaign, PHR is well-positioned to take the next step toward ensuring all people have the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

PHR brings a critical human rights lens to all the issues we address and unparalleled experience in mobilizing health care professionals to advocate for health and human rights. While there are a number of organizations that focus on gender inequalities in African health care, few focus on mobilizing and training health care professionals to use their knowledge in effecting policy changes. PHR is a respected voice on Capitol Hill, with a strong track record of educating political leaders and other policymakers to effect change. Health Action AIDS has built significant organizational credibility on such issues as health workforce and health system strengthening, harm reduction, and women's health.

Change Is Possible

When Congressional initiatives to overcome the massive funding gap and the lack of AIDS treatment in Africa stalled at the beginning of this century, NGOs called for a presidential AIDS initiative, and helped to create the momentum, political imperative and ideas behind what became PEPFAR. Five years later, having paved the road to change by educating members of Congress on PEPFAR's shortcomings in such areas as the health workforce and meeting the needs of women, NGOs combined Washington advocacy with grassroots strategies to bring about new PEPFAR legislation that authorized more funding and important new targets and policies. Yet funding gaps remain immense for many global health issues, such as AIDS, maternal health, and health system strengthening. Changes on the ground remain minimal compared to the vast need, and policies still frequently fail the populations they are meant to serve. As a framework, mindset and uniting principle, the right to health has the potential to catalyze significant, sustainable progress towards overcoming these challenges.

Our goal is not modest. The change required is great. Helping to transform the global response to fundamental health needs from one of unnecessarily constrained resources, continued entrenched inequalities and limited accountability into one grounded in the right to health, with the funding, equity and accountability that this entails, is one of the great challenges of our time. The stakes for a considerable portion of the world's population are too large to settle for any outcome other than success. We look forward to your joining our efforts, and those of our many partners in this movement, to help achieve this transformation. Your voice can – and will – make a difference.