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29 October 2013: Essex leads World Health Organization (WHO) event in Geneva

Staff from our School of Law and Department of Sociology have hosted a meeting in Geneva in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss human rights issues relating to women’s and children’s health.

Professor Paul Hunt, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, led the event with Gen Sander from Law and Dr Linsey McGoey of Sociology.

The meeting – attended by academics from various disciplines and representatives from around ten states, UN agencies, NGOs and national human rights institutions – was called to consider issues raised by a recent WHO monograph Women’s and Children’s Health: Evidence of Impact of Human Rights.

Dr McGoey said: “The meeting helped showcase recent research at Essex on the value and necessity of developing rigorous, mixed-methods approaches for understanding how human rights based initiatives are improving the health of women and children across the globe.”

The event was funded thanks to our Interdisciplinary Fund with support from the School of Law, the Human Rights Centre and the Department of Sociology. It was supported by our interdisciplinary initiative the Politics of Health Network led by Dr McGoey alongside Professor Gill Green and Dr Ewen Speed from the School of Health and Human Sciences, Professor Joan Busfield from the Department of Sociology and Dr Jason Glynos from the Departmnent of Government. Funding was also provided from a recent Economic and Social Research Council seminar series grant, ‘Evidence in Interdisciplinary Contexts: the Value and Ethics of Randomized Controlled Trials’ a three-year project led by Dr McGoey.