Responding to Eugene Volokh, Medical Self-Defense, Prohibited Experimental Therapies, and Payment for Organs, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1813 (2007) Professor Volokh argues for a constitutional right to medical self-defense for two purposes: first, to allow terminally ill patients to purchase, at their...

Objective: To study cross-national inequalities in mortality of adults and of children aged 5 years using a novel approach, with clustering techniques to stratify countries into mortality groups (better-off, worse-off, mid-level) and to examine risk factors associated with inequality. Design,...

Background: A world divided by health inequalities poses ethical challenges for global health. International and national responses to health disparities must be rooted in ethical values about health and its distribution; this is because ethical claims have the power to motivate, delineate...

South Africa’s government disability grants are considered important in providing income support to low-income AIDS patients. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals may opt to compromise their health by foregoing highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) to remain...

The 21st century global health landscape requires effective global action in the face of globalization of trade, travel, information, human rights, ideas, and disease. The new global health era is more plural, comprising a number of key actors, and requiring more coordination of effort,...

I trace the evolution of ethical approaches to health policy in the United States and examine a number of critical unresolved issues pertaining to the current set of frameworks. Several themes emerge. First, fair procedures claim more attention than substantive and procedural principles. Second,...

This review takes stock of the global health governance (GHG) literature. We address the transition from international health governance (IHG) to global health governance, identify major actors, and explain some challenges and successes in GHG. We analyze the framing of health as national...

Global health scholarship has failed to adequately consider the “BRIC” cluster of nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - particularly in the aggregate. An article search with the keywords “BRIC” and “public health” yields just one publication. But these countries have a unique...

Background: Significant health expenses can force households to reduce consumption of items required for daily living and long-term well-being, depriving them of the capability to lead economically stable and healthy lives. Previous studies of out-of-pocket (OOP) and other health expenses have...

This special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities focuses on two areas of substantial and growing importance to the human development and capability approach: disability and health. The research on disability, health and the capability approach has been diverse in the...