The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights is the first academic center in the world to focus exclusively on health and human rights. Dedicated to education, research, and policy, the Center applies a strong academic research base to a dedicated commitment to service and policy development.

Background

The FXB Center was founded at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in 1993, through a gift from the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud. In 1996, it moved from Cambridge to Boston, to the newly constructed François-Xavier Bagnoud Building at HSPH in the Longwood Medical Area. Jonathan Mann, the first François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor and Center Director, served from 1993 until his tragic death in 1997. He was followed by Daniel Tarantola and Sofia Gruskin (acting directors, 1997 to 1999) and Stephen Marks (1999 to 2006). [click here for more about the Center's early history]

Jim Yong Kim was appointed FXB Professor and Center Director in July 2006, when he returned to Harvard from the World Health Organization. While at WHO, he had served as Director of HIV/AIDS, where he led the "3 x 5" initiative, a commitment to ensure that by 2005 three million people in developing countries received the AIDS treatment they need.

Mission

Faculty at the FXB Center work with academic, research, and service projects around the globe. These include collaboration and partnerships with health and human rights practitioners, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and international agencies. The mission of the Center comes to life through:

• expanding academic scholarship, professional training, and public education
• building and developing domestic and international policy that takes seriously the individual and community relationships between health and human rights in a global perspective
• engaging scholars, public health and human rights practitioners, public officials, donors, and activists in the health and human rights movement.

Current Initiatives

Programs

FXB is now engaged in five major program initiatives. The Global Health Delivery Program is an initiative to create a new discipline of health care delivery science, implementing quality health care in low-resource settings. As part of this program, FXB will offer a special summer course on "Global Health Care Delivery" in July, 2008, co-taught by Jim Yong Kim, Paul Farmer, Joseph Rhatigan, and William Rodriguez, with Professor Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School as guest faculty. The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA) is a time-limited (2006-2008) global alliance committed to generating and establishing new and permanent practices that will improve the well-being of children living in a world with HIV/AIDS. The project on HIV Care and Treatment in Lesotho is a collaboration with Partners in Health to provide integrated HIV and tuberculosis (TB) care and treatment in the mountains of this southern African country. The FXB Research Program on Children and Global Adversity (RPCGA), directed by Dr. Theresa Betancourt, focuses on applied research in global child health and human rights in the context of threats to children's security, such as living in a situation of armed conflict. The program is developing an evidence base for strategies and methods that will close the global implementation gap to ensure children their basic security and developmental needs. Lastly, the Program on Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights (HCHR), directed by Dr. Jennifer Leaning, studies and responds to the key factors that cause and sustain such crises (Hurricane Katrina, for example), and trains leaders and professionals in crisis prevention and response. [note: though this link seems to be missing from the current FXB lists online, HCHR is included here because it is listed under the FXB logo at:: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/fxbcenter/humanitarian_crises.htm].

Publications

FXB publications address the various themes of its mission. Health and Human Rights: An International Journal has a well-established tradition of critical scholarship in the field. In 2007 PIH cofounder, Paul Farmer, was appointed Editor-in-Chief. HHR is now poised to "go live" as an online, open-access publication in the spring of 2008. The full text will be freely available to anyone with internet access. Dedicated to increase both access and action-oriented dialogue among human rights practitioners, the "new" HHR will continue to publish peer-reviewed scholarship while also highlighting the innovative work of groups and individuals in direct engagement with human rights struggles.

Other FXB publications include annual and quarterly reports, various formal papers and reports that emerge from individual projects, occasional books by Center faculty members, the Harvard Series on Health and Human Rights, and an archive of our Working Papers Series (1994-2004), most of these also available as full text online.

FXB Partners

From its home at the Harvard School of Public Health, the FXB Center is closely associated with three other "partners" in its shared vision for integrating health and human rights. These include the non-profit organization, Partners in Health (PIH), the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities (DSMHI) at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Department of Social Medicine (DSM) at Harvard Medical School. Other relevant programs and organizations engaged in shared interests, vision, and frequent collaborations are listed as links at our "Partners" page.

contact us:

François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
Harvard School of Public Health [with link to HSPH]
651 Huntington Avenue, 7th floor
Boston, MA 02115 USA
tel: +1-617-432-0656 Fax +1-617-432-4310
email: MSZPERKA@hsph.harvard.edu

This site last updated March 2008.
contact the web master for any questions or comments [add link]

note: This webpage is a draft mock-up design created by Susan R. Holman on 3/18/08 and intended for internal reference ONLY. If you are puzzled to find yourself here and want to learn more about FXB, visit it's "real" home on the web at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/fxbcenter