The Beginning...
I began my internship on Monday with the Program on International Health and Human Rights (PIHHR) at Harvard School of Public Health. The office is a small office within the school located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston. Longwood has many of the very well known hospitals in Boston as well as Harvard's Medical School. On my first day, I was given a tour of the building itself as well as the Longwood area by Jesse, the Program Assistant. That particular day, only one other woman was in the office because everyone else was traveling, some to New York, some to Brazil. The office itself only has 6 people working in it, but PIHHR is involved with many other organizations as well. Everyone in the office travels constantly and each speaks 3-4 languages. The program focuses on taking a human rights based approach to health care. The program has three different areas that they study, HIV/AIDS, gender based violence, and reproductive health. For an example of a violation of human rights through HIV/AIDS, we can consider mandatory HIV/AIDS tests. This would be a clear violation of human rights and something that this program would not support. What would be done with the results?
Right now, I am working on a manual that outlines a human rights based approach to treatment plans. The manual outlines the basics of human rights and how that applies to the given areas previously mentioned. There was just a large conference in Boston with the people in my department and many others from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). PIHHR works very closely with UNFPA, due to the fact that they often have overlapping goals. At the conference, PIHHR provided the audience with a draft of the manual and everyone added their own comments for improvement. Now, I am helping to organize the comments of the manual. I am also looking for concrete examples to add to the manual to show previous studies related to the human rights based approach. I would say that I am very happy with my first week thus far, and am already learning a great deal!