Creating Model Health Communities, Summit II: Human Rights & Community Health Engagement: Think Globally to Act Locally

The Creating Model Health Communities summits were developed to facilitate discussion about the role a medical school might play in developing “model health communities” in Austin-Travis County. Topics addressed included health and human rights, patient-centered care, social and community medicine, medical humanities, health equity, and health care disparities. Nationally recognized speakers engaged with the summit participants to examine critical challenges and needed changes in health care and other systems, with a focus on education, research, policy, and service. With the ultimate goal of fostering interdisciplinary engagement between the university and the surrounding community, the summits also examined the role participatory research might serve as an important vehicle for their collaboration.

Summit II: Human Rights & Community Health Engagement: Think Globally to Act Locally considered how human rights and community health engagement models developed and used around the world might help guide service provision, training, research, and advocacy in the Austin area. Speakers discussed how the language and concepts of human rights might inform a strategy for breaking through political and ideological obstacles that often hinder efforts to address inequities on a broad scale.