The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice 2004 report Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition expresses a clear allegiance to competition as the organizing principle for health care. In Europe, by contrast, the key organizing principle of health care systems is solidarity. Solidarity means that all have access to health care based on medical needs, regardless of ability to pay...

BACKGROUND Little is known about social capital and health among older adults in South Africa. This study investigates the association between social capital and several health variables, namely: self-rated health, depressive symptoms, cognitive functioning and physical inactivity, among older South Africans. METHODS We conducted a national population-based cross-sectional study with a nation...

Concerns about the impact of immigration (‘diversity’) on welfare states (‘solidarity’) are widespread among political economists. This article presents an alternative theoretical framework for understanding their relationship. Using social and cultural theory, I argue that it is tautological to suggest diversity solidarity covary; both emerge out same ideological material efforts construct ‘in...

Although the crisis of health care in the United States is widely acknowledged- marked by poor health outcomes, high costs, unequal access, and widening health inequities--its structural underpinnings have not been adequately addressed and reformers have settled on promoting piecemeal measures to avoid disruption. The human right to health care offers an analytical and advocacy framework for sh...

We draw on the experience of a Learning Network for Health and Human Rights (LN) involving collaboration between academic institutions and civil society organizations in the Western Cape, South Africa, aimed at identifying and disseminating best practice related to the right to health. The LN's work in materials development, participatory research, training and capacity-building for action, and...

“Let’s achieve a miracle” (Logremos un milagro) was the slogan of the first Telethon in Chile, a charity fund-raiser for the rehabilitation of children with disabilities. “La Teletón,” founded by Mario Kreutzberger1 in 1978, was so successful that its name and structure have been replicated through an umbrella organization operating in twelve different Latin American countries.2 Images of child...

I found just the place for me...even though one doesn’t accomplish great things. But we know what we want. We chose this...We aren’t going to give in to power, staying home. It’s good for us to be out in the street, doing something, awakening the recognition of folks. It’s tied to the solidarity of others with you... It comes from my father and sharing a plate of food, and the neighbours...You ...

Family composition and relationships may undergo significant changes upon immigration and settlement. This article approaches teen-parent relationships through the intergenerational solidarity framework, which addresses three areas of conflict and/or consensus related to (a) functional solidarity, (b) consensual solidarity, and (3) normative solidarity. Interviews took place in the Sri Lankan T...

Abstract European States have adopted policies to push back not only against migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea but also those individuals and NGOs who act in solidarity with them. This article seeks demonstrate how activities of maritime may be protected from States’ interferences within framework international human rights law. In a novel inquiry, we submit that both monitoring as ...

The right to health has been advanced as one of the key elements to creating pro-poor people-centred health systems (Hunt and Backman 2008; Gruskin et al. 2012). However, one of the challenges for realizing the right to health is the seeming conflict between public health utility and the entitlements afforded by a human rights approach to health. This dichotomy begs two sub-questions, both of w...