Our Mission

GHJG seeks to convene interdisciplinary collaborations across the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, engaging scholars and practitioners with expertise in human rights, public health, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. In partnership with community-level actors, we draw on emerging and innovative work in public health and development -- including qualitative and quantitative approaches to systems thinking, “doing development differently,” health and human rights, accountability, health systems policy and research, and social epidemiology. Faculty and staff affiliated with GHJG seek to determine where governance is missing, and interrogate how existing standards eitherpromote justice or create injustice by compounding inequality and undermining the right to health. GHJG has formulated objectives in the areas of gender, environment, and food. The program works to recognize how the intersection of these three domains impacts the fulfillment of the right to health. 

GHJG aims to disrupt global governance policies and structures that lead to injustice and poor health outcomes. Together with our global partners, we: 

• Identify and evaluate ways in which current legal and governance systems fail to protect public health. 

• Advance, within a human rights framework, potential interventions in legal and global governance approaches to improve public health, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. 

• Increase the application of human rights principles in global health governance.