Beyond Coverage: Putting People First in Pennsylvania’s Healthcare System

This report, Beyond Coverage: Putting People First in Pennsylvania’s Healthcare System, tells the story of Pennsylvania’s healthcare system from the perspective of the people of the state. Through surveys of over 300 people in 43 counties and stories from five courageous individuals, Beyond Coverage reveals the critical ways in which the state’s private, for-profit insurance system is failing to […]

Human Rights Assessment Tool for Healthcare Systems

This comprehensive tool enables a human rights assessment of a wide range of healthcare reform initiatives, based on key human rights principles. It was originally developed for and applied to the reform effort in Vermont.

What Is a Human Rights Narrative and How Can It Help Create Change?

This fact sheet describes the components of a human rights narrative and how it can be used to counter dominant narratives that deny people’s rights and maintain systems of oppression. A human rights narrative reflects shared values that unify people around a positive vision for transformative change.

Human Rights Principles and Vision Workshop – Facilitator’s Guide

A facilitation guide for a workshop that presents the human rights framework as a way to articulate our vision for a different kind of world and to increase our understanding of the human rights principles. The idea of the workshop is to “exercise the muscle” in our brains that helps us think about these principles […]

Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign 10 Financing Standards

These human rights standards for financing healthcare were developed by Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign as part of a detailed rights-based proposal for financing the state’s universal healthcare system. Download the standards below or read the full proposal here.

A Human Rights Vision for Society: Core Principles

This fact sheet puts forward human rights principles for a broader economic and social rights agenda in the U.S., as agreed by grassroots groups that came together in a Human Rights at Home campaign in 2012.

Campaigns for the Human Right to Healthcare: Stories from Struggles

At the US Social Forum (Detroit in June 2010), Rishi Manchanda from the South Los Angeles Coalition for Health and Human Rights, Kim Abbott from the Montana Human Rights Network, Peg Franzen from the Vermont Workers’ Center, and Anja Rudiger from NESRI discuss approaches, challenges, victories, and lessons learned in their struggles for human right […]

Vermonters Demand an Equitable Health System

As a universal, equitable health care system is within reach for Vermonters, the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign (run by the Vermont Workers’ Center) has released this short video of Vermonters demanding an equitable health care system. The Vermont legislature is considering a bill for a roadmap to a single-payer system in Vermont.

Vermonters Demand a Universal Health System

As a universal, equitable health care system is within reach for Vermonters, the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign (run by the Vermont Workers’ Center) has released this short video of Vermonters demanding a universal health care system. The Vermont legislature is considering a bill for a roadmap to a single-payer system in Vermont.

Vermonters Demand an Accountable Health System

A universal health care system that’s accountable to the people is now within Vermonters’ reach. The Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign (run by the Vermont Workers’ Center) has released this short video of Vermonters demanding an accountable health care system. The video is part of a series, all featuring Vermonters calling for a new […]

Using Human Rights for Health Care Advocacy

This presentation sets out the basics for using a human rights approach to develop broad-based campaigns and advocacy initiatives for health care reform, illustrated with examples of lessons learned from Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign.

A Strategic Vision for the Human Rights at Home Campaign

This statement was created by a grassroots coalition to describe a collective vision for a society guided by human rights. It describes how human rights arise from people’s struggles for justice, how governments are accountable for upholding human rights, how principles must guide struggles, and how a human rights vision builds unity among people and […]

NESRI’s Universal Periodic Review Report

This report was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council by NESRI and a coalition of seven collaborating organizations. It addresses serious and ongoing issues in the state of economic and social rights in the US, and gives recommendations for action by the US Government.

“Small Place Close to Home”: Toward a Health and Human Rights Strategy for the US

In the journal Health and Human Rights, Elizabeth Tobin Tyler explores health and human rights strategies in the US. While she mainly focuses on legal approaches, she also stresses the importance of grassroots organizing to drive policy change by highlighting the Vermont Workers’ Center’s campaign for universal publicly funded health care.

Building Local Support for the Human Right to Healthcare

This presentation, prepared for the conference “Health and Human Rights in Connecticut” at the University of Connecticut, April 28, 2011, shows how the human rights framework can be used for health reform advocacy in the United States, with examples from Montana and Vermont.

Vermont Declaration of Human Rights

Vermont’s People’s Convention for Human Rights, held in September 2012 with over 40 organizations participating, adopted this declaration of human rights, which outlines the current human rights crisis, its root causes, and the vision for realizing human rights.

Embedding the Human Right to Healthcare in the US State Constitutions

Over recent years, health reform advocates in a number of U.S. states have run campaigns for including the human right to health care in state constitutions. This review summarizes these efforts, analyzes challenges common to this advocacy strategy, and offers key lessons learned. It examines cases from Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, North Carolina, and Florida.

Human Rights Assessment of Single Payer Plans

This report provides an in-depth human rights assessment of single payer health care proposals, along with a framework for assessing legislation. It compares single payer plans to the market-based insurance model and finds that a single payer approach is able to meet most human rights standards.

Realizing the Right to Health

In this third volume of the Swiss Human Rights Book series, leading international experts in human rights and health address issues such as access to essential medicine, HIV/AIDS, trade and health, SARS and malaria, and human rights approaches to other key health challenges. They address the role of governments, non-state actors and healthcare practitioners, the […]

Human Right to Healthcare

This info sheet highlights the key principles of the human right to healthcare and government obligations to ensure the human right to healthcare.

Role of Single Payer Proposals in the Human Right to Healthcare

This fact sheet compares single payer health care proposals to market-based approaches, based on human rights principles, and finds that single payer proposals are far better at meeting human rights standards. Download the factsheet below, or read the full report on single payer and human rights here.

Human Right to Health and Healthcare

This fact sheet briefly explains the human right to health and health care, and lists the international treaties which guarantee these rights.

People of Color and the Human Right to Healthcare: Federal Health Reform Law

In its series of fact sheets on the human rights impact of the new law, the NESRI release this analysis from the perspective of people of color. We find that the law’s failure to meet the key human rights standards of universality, equity, and accountability has concrete repercussions for people of color.

From Market Competition to Solidarity?

The human right to healthcare offers an analytical and advocacy framework for shifting the healthcare reform debate from individualist, market-based approaches to the collective responsibility for health care as a public good.

From Private Profits to Public Goods?

This article discusses the health policy proposals of the 2008 presidential election campaign and primaries, thereby offering a historical perspective on the reform positions that have shaped health policy under the Obama administration

Vermont Workers’ Center People’s Toolkit

This is a comprehensive guide to assist Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign members in answering common questions, applying the human rights principles, evaluating legislative proposals and advocating with legislators.

Human Rights Standards for Healthcare Benefits

These human rights standards for health care “benefits” were developed by Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign to hold the government accountable for enabling access to all needed care and meeting all health needs.

Human Rights Assessment Tool for Healthcare Benefits

This tool enables a human rights assessment of a healthcare benefits proposals, based on key human rights principles. It was developed for assessing the Green Mountain Care universal healthcare system planned in Vermont.

Human Rights Principles for Healthcare

This document presents Vermont’s Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign’s original statement of the five human rights principles (universality, equity, accountability, transparency, and participation).