Background: Service accreditation is a structured process of recognising and promoting performance and adherence to standards. Typically, accreditation agencies either receive standards from an authorized body or develop new and upgrade existing standards through research and expert views. They...

Throughout the HIV epidemic, criminal law has been invoked to deter and punish sexual transmission. The public health community has not favored the enactment of criminal laws specifically targeting people with HIV, nor endorsed the application of general criminal laws to HIV - but neither has it...

Social epidemiology has made a powerful case that health is determined not just by individual-level factors such as our genetic make-up, access to medical services, or lifestyle choices, but also by social conditions, including the economy, law, and culture. Indeed, at the level of populations,...

Governance, by which I mean the management of the course of events in a system, is an overarching issue of concern to health from an ecological point of view. Governance consists largely in the policing social relations, environmental conditions and the allocation of resources essential to...

Security matters to health. Crime victimization causes death, injury and illness. Injury or death is an occupational hazard for police. The criminal justice system causes injury and illness in the course of attempting to punish and deter crime. Policing policies and practices can have a...

There is an argument that policing practices exacerbate HIV risk, particularly for female sex workers. Interventions that mobilize sex workers to seek changes in laws and law enforcement practices have been prominent in India and have received considerable scholarly attention. Yet, there are few...