"My passion in life is to unleash the power of collective action for social change that will lead to the liberation of all people. The increased conversations about racism today and the many claims of racism as a public health crisis provides us with an opportunity to demand that action to dismantle systemic racism follow suit. If we know a harm exists, we have a duty to course correct.”

The Pod For the Cause by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.  The series helps to spark conversation and activism on some of the most critical issues of today from the courts to immigration.  This podcast was created for folks that want to effect change, who understand the importance of restoring our democracy, and want to engage in deep conversation around the issues. 

For the past decade I’ve been engaged in health activism and advocacy, pushing international institutions and governments around the world to fulfill their duty to ensure that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” (Article 25, UDHR) During my MPH practicum I began working with the People’s Health Movement (PHM) which is a network of grassroots organizers as well as academics, civil society organizations, and other institutions that emphasizes the need to build power from the ground up to make sustainable change.  During my time with PHM, I grew to understand the indivisible and universal nature of human rights: that in order to enjoy the right to health we must be able to achieve all other rights too. I then engaged in research focusing on privatization and the outsized role private companies play in decisions that affect our health. The research ranged from expensive medicines and health care services to lack of clean water, crumbling infrastructure, and subpar schools, private companies control and profit from many of the resources we need to achieve our fundamental rights. 

I also engage in this work on an international level attending a conference with Our Future is Public in Santiago, Chile.  This conference brought together about 400 people–activists, advocates, academics, people from NGOs–across several sectors, including health, energy, education, transport, and several others–to plan advocacy and action strategies to resist privatization of public services, including demanding that governments to strengthen public services rather than hire private actors to administer them. Our position is that public services increase access for everyone to social determinants of health and, thus, leads us all closer to realizing the right to health and all of our human rights as laid out in the UDHR and subsequent human rights treaties.

As an adjunct instructor for the MPH program at Simmons, I try to bring my experiences as a bearer of human rights which are often violated and also as a health activist and advocate for human rights in the US and globally. I also am the faculty adviser for the student organizing group HERE4Justice and work closely with students to develop analyses and campaigns that are explicit about how injustices we, unfortunately, have grown accustomed to are human rights violations. It’s my sincere hope that students leave my classes and other work we do together with a real sense of their inherent human rights, their connection with our global society because of those rights, and the importance of always fighting to protect them.

In the past several years–as corporate power takes deeper hold, as racist systems and individuals bear down on oppressed people of the world, as economic inequality grows, as women’s rights and LGBTQ rights are attacked and diminished–it looks like the promise of the UDHR is slipping further and further away. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has set the theme of this year’s Human Rights Day as “Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All” calling on everyone to #StandUp4HumanRights. I find hope in building relationships and solidarity with people from all over the world engaged in health activism. I’m also inspired in my work as an adjunct instructor at Simmons and with MPH to bring human rights to the forefront of the work of public health.

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