Sofia Gruskin

Sofia Gruskin is an advocate and a scholar whose work of the past 25 years has developed the conceptual, methodological and empirical links between health and human rights, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, child and adolescent health, gender-based violence, HIV and AIDS, non-communicable disease, and health systems. Sofia Gruskin is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine and Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law, University of Southern California. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.

Sofia Gruskin is the co-coordinator of the Rights Oriented Research and Education (RORE) Network in Sexual and Reproductive Health, an international network of sexual and reproductive health and rights researchers and advocates, a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board, a member of the Guttmacher Institute’s Board of Directors, a member of the Core Group of Experts on Under 5 Mortality and Morbidity for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization, and more.

Background

Gruskin’s focus on public health, human rights and law emerged during the early years of the global AIDS crisis. Gruskin observed that around the world a broad range of rights were being restricted in the name of public health but without proper justification, resulting in widespread violations of rights with devastating health effects. At that time there were no documented research efforts or programmatic activities explicitly linking health and human rights, and no evidence of the utility of these links for the work of public health.

In 1993, Jonathan Mann brought Gruskin and Daniel Tarantola, M.D., together to establish the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. During Gruskin’s time there, she was the head of Harvard School of Public Health’s Program on International Health and Human Rights and co-director the Interdepartmental Program on Women, Gender and Health. She also chaired the Group on Reproductive Health and Rights based at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Sofia Gruskin was on the Amnesty International Board of Directors (1996-2000); Chair of the UNAIDS Global Reference Group on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, (2002-2006); the principal architect of the 2003 General Comment on HIV/AIDS promulgated by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; a standing member of the Scientific Review Committee on Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS for the National Institutes of Health (2005-2009); a member of the . Institute of Medicine's Committee for the Outcome and Impact Evaluation of Global HIV/AIDS Programs Implemented Under the Lantos/Hyde Act of 2008 (PEPFAR, 2010-2013) and the Technical Advisory Group of the UN Global Commission on HIV and the Law (2010-2012).

The field of health and human rights is now well recognized, and Gruskin has been a singular figure continuously at the cutting edge of conceptual and programming advances.

Career

Sofia Gruskin’s contribution has been in influencing the direction of public health research and action by defining key concepts, developing and testing conceptual and analytical frameworks, and creating policy and programming tools. Gruskin’s work ranges from global policy to the grassroots level, with particularly intense collaborations in Brazil and Vietnam.

Gruskin’s efforts have been to define, operationalize and test what is meant by a “rights-based” approach to health; produce scholarly work to define the conceptual differences between human rights and other frameworks concerned with justice, including ethics, and equity; to make clear the distinct contributions human rights offers to health practice and outcomes including the use of indicators to determine the contribution of human rights to public health efforts globally.

Quotes

“We have to recognize that law impacts health and we need to know when law is harming and when it needs to change,” said Gruskin. “What should be done to be sure you can access what you need, when you need it, no matter where you are or who you are? How do we best ensure health systems are supportive of the health and human rights of all populations?”

Education

After completing a degree in Sociology that focused on Ethnomethodology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Gruskin earned a juris doctorate from the Cardozo School of Law in 1990, and then went on to obtain a master’s degree in International Affairs with specialization in Public Health and Human Rights from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in1993.

Books, Monographs and Edited Collections

• Gruskin S. An International Perspective on AIDS-Related Violations of Human Rights, American Foundation for AIDS Research, New York (1996).
• Mann J, Gruskin S, Bertrand D. Santé Publique et Droits de l'Homme, Collection Espace Ethique, Paris (1997).
• Mann J, Gruskin S, Grodin M, Annas G, eds. Health and Human Rights: A Reader. New York: Routledge (1999).
• Gruskin S, ed. Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos: Aportes y Dialogos Contemporaneos. Lima: Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan, (2001).
• Gruskin S, Grodin M, Annas G, Marks SP (eds.) Perspectives in Health and Human Rights, Routledge,Taylor & Francis Group (2005).
• Gruskin S. (ed). ‘Pregnancy Decisions of HIV-Positive Women’ (Supp). Reproductive Health Matters, vol. 20, no. 39, pp. 1-140 (2012).
• Gruskin S. (ed). ‘Abortion as a Matter of Reproductive Rights’, American Journal of Public Health, edited collection (2013).
• Grodin M, Tarantola D, Annas G, Gruskin S. (eds.) Health and Human Rights in a Changing World, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2013).

Articles

Gruskin is an Associate Editor for The American Journal of Public Health, Global Public Health, and Reproductive Health Matters. Representative articles include:

• Mann J, Gostin L, Gruskin S, Brennan T, Lazzarini Z, Fineberg H. ‘Health and Human Rights,’ Health and Human Rights, vol. 1, no. 1 (1994).
• Braveman P, Gruskin S. ‘Defining Equity in Health,’ Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 254-258 (2003).
• Gruskin S, Mills EJ, Tarantola D. ‘History, Principles and Practice of Health and Human Rights,’ The Lancet, vol. 370, pp.449-455 (2007).
• Gruskin S, Daniels N. ‘Justice and Human Rights: Priority Setting and Fair Deliberative Process,’ American Journal of Public Health, vol. 98, no. 9, pp. 1573-1577 (2008).
• Gruskin S, Ferguson L. ‘Using Indicators to Determine the Contribution of Human Rights to Public Health Efforts: Why? What? And How?’ Bulletin of the World Health Organization, vol. 87, no. 9, pp. 714-719 (2009).
• Gruskin S, Raad Z. ‘Are Drug Companies Living Up to Their Human Rights Responsibilities? Moving Toward Assessment,’ PLOS Medicine, vol. 7, no. 9 (2010).
• Gruskin S, Bogecho D, Ferguson L. ‘Rights-Based Approaches to Health Policies and Programmes: Articulations, Ambiguities and Assessment,’ Journal of Public Health Policy, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 129-145 (2010).
• Gruskin S, Ferguson L, Alfervson T, Peersman G, Rugg D. ‘Identifying Structural Barriers to an Effective HIV Response: Using 2010 NCPI Data to Evaluate the Human Rights, Legal and Policy Environment,’ Journal of the International AIDS Society, vol. 16, (2013).
• Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and Human Rights, A Toolbox for Examining Laws, Regulations and Policies, Department of Reproductive Health & Research, World Health Organization, Geneva (2014).

References

• 1. Tarantola, D.; Byrnes,A. Johnson, M.; Kemp, L; Zwi, AB; Gruskin, S (2008). "Human Rights, Health and Development". Australian Journal of Human Rights 13(2):1-32
• 2. Grodin, M.; Tarantola, D.; Annas, G.; Gruskin, S. (2013). "Health and Human Rights in a Changing World' (textbook)". Routledge.com.