Tag: alicia yamin

Photo of Alicia Ely Yamin doing fieldwork courtesy of Marion Brown.

Q&A with PFC Director of Global Health and Rights Project, Alicia Ely Yamin

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Alicia Ely Yamin J.D. (1991), M.P.H. (1996), Ph.D. is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (PFC) at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Frequently labelled a scholar-activist, she combines academic research and scholarship that bridges law, development, and public health with grassroots work and policy advocacy. She has lived in seven countries on four continents, and worked with and for local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).

In the interview below, she shares more about her career and life.

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Alicia Ely Yamin.

6 Questions for Alicia Ely Yamin on Partners In Health, Social Justice, and Human Rights

Jonathan Chernoguz Leave a comment

By Jonathan Chernoguz

Among many other accomplishments, Alicia Ely Yamin (Petrie-Flom Center Senior Fellow), will now serve as the Senior Advisor on Human Rights at Partners In Health (PIH).

Partners In Health is a global health and social justice organization committed to improving the health of the poor and marginalized as a matter of justice. PIH works with ministries of health to build local and national clinical capacity and works closely with impoverished communities to delivery high quality healthcare, address the root causes of disease, train providers, advance research, and advocate for global health policy change.

Yamin is a world-recognized pioneer and thought-leader in the field of health and human rights. She has a long track record of working on the ground as well as at policy levels, including in collaboration with PIH sister organizations from Peru to Malawi. Yamin will work across a multi-disciplinary team within PIH and the broader Global Health Delivery Partnership, to advance an advocacy and policy agenda for transformative structural change in global health architecture and its intersections. To learn more about her new role, we asked Yamin a few questions about the position, how it relates to Petrie-Flom, and the goals she aims to accomplish.

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Road sign that reads "Attention Ebola"

Ebola… again: What have we learned?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Alicia Ely Yamin

As Susan Sontag eloquently noted decades ago, illness conjures metaphors that reveal a great deal about how we think about, and, in turn, address them. None more so than the lethal Ebola, which monstrously disfigures bodies before killing the infected person and spreading rapidly through the routines of everyday life.

In the West, Ebola evokes images of illness as a deadly foreign invasion, while in the West African pandemic we know that first those who were afflicted—and later those who survived—were stigmatized as possessing demons.

The growing outbreak in the DRC has produced calls for greater physical and financial involvement from the US government by a number of health law scholars, citing the potential for exponential spread if it reaches highly populated areas, and underscoring it as a global health security issue.  Thus far, WHO’s Director General has not declared it a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (PHEIC), which triggers consideration of both trade and travel restrictions, as well as international assistance and under the International Health Regulations. Read More