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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Ted Schrecker
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
“Building back better” post-pandemic, as advocated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, could advance the realization of health as a human right. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely to represent a tipping point into a new and even more unequal normal, nationally and internationally, that represents a hostile environment for building back better. This paper begins with a brief explanation of the tipping point concept. It goes on to describe the mechanisms by which the pandemic and many responses to it have increased inequality, and then identifies three political dynamics that are inimical to realizing health as a human right even in formal democracies, two of them material (related to the unequal distribution of resources within societies and in the global economy) and one ideational (the continued hegemony of neoliberal ideas about the proper limits of public policy). Observations about the unequal future and what it means for health conclude the paper.
Author(s): Schrecker T
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Health and Human Rights Journal
Year: 2023
Volume: 25
Issue: 2
Pages: 111-123
Print publication date: 07/12/2023
Online publication date: 07/12/2023
Acceptance date: 06/11/2023
Date deposited: 25/12/2023
ISSN (print): 1079-0969
ISSN (electronic): 2150-4113
Publisher: FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
URL: http://www.hhrjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2469/2023/12/schrecker.pdf
