Talk:Right to health

Untitled
Here is an interesting article on the topic of the right to health in the lancet:

--WS 20:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Criticism?
This article needs a criticism section. Not everyone believes that this right exists. --75.130.139.171 (talk) 02:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. Furthermore, the "right to health" has lead to many interesting judicial decisions. It would be interesting to have a detailing about how courts in various jurisdictions have treated this right and what it entails - what treatments are covered etc.Nickkokay (talk) 12:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the addition of the word "theoretical" in the opening sentence would be NPOV and objective as all "rights" are indeed theoretical. Additionally, the addition of this word in the opening sentence of this Wiki would pay tribute to the fact that the status of this theory as a "right" is debated among mainstream politicians and laypeople. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.162.134.160 (talk) 14:30, 25 July 2012 (UTC)


 * WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE. - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:38, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

SOCI 280 Suggested Revisions
My name is Amol Utrankar, and I am a student in the Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities course at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The 'capstone' assignment for our course is to complete a substantial revision to a Wikipedia page, and believing the topic of healthcare as a human right to be an important scholarly issue, I have selected to make my contributions on this page.

The changes I intend to make are as follows:
 * The revision of the 'Definition' section to be partitioned into sections by international agreement, thereby allowing for greater clarity and depth with respect to not only excerpts from the agreements, but interpretations of their relevance, scope, and limitations from approved scholarly material.
 * The overhaul of the 'Rights of patient care' section into a 'Rights of healthcare' section that enumerates the entitlements that people commonly enjoy under a broader right to health. For example, considerations include health access, equity, accountability, affordability, and quality. In its current iteration, this section mentions many valid points, but it could use some re-structuring for additional clarity.
 * A country-by-country overview of some prominent case studies that highlight different countries' approaches to healthcare as a human right. For example, the state of the right to health is likely to vary tremendously between the United States, the United Kingdom, China, India, Brazil, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to draw randomly from countries with differing political ideologies, systems of governance, cultural backgrounds, levels of socioeconomic affluence, and geographic locations. The right to health is far from a homogeneously-recognized entity worldwide, and a country-specific section would help elaborate upon this variation.
 * Sections for support/criticism for the idea of health as a human right. Specifically, I recognize many valid points in the comments below, and agree that a NPOV requires acknowledgement that there is significant criticism from some circles towards the concept of a right to healthcare. I will cite from existing legal documents and peer-reviewed publications on the subject to discuss some of the prominent schools of thought in this area.

Of course, as this is one of my first contributions to Wikipedia, I welcome the opportunity to hear suggestions and critiques from others on this proposed overhaul. Part of the experience of this project is the chance to be involved in a digital collaboration on a worldwide scale, so I appreciate any feedback that others (particularly those with more experience editing for Wikipedia) may have to offer. Thank you!

128.42.99.163 (talk) 07:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC) Amolutrankar (talk) 15:01, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I like what you propose but in research sometimes things are difficult to manage this way. I hope that you can do what you say, but often it is difficult to set goals in research because the researcher is powerless to to explain anything for which scholarly publications cannot be found. Whenever you develop this article provide a citation after every sentence you add. I wish you the best luck in doing this, but I think you might find that you proposed a really big project. Do the best you can, and if possible, make one section of this article perfect and well-sourced in favor of making the entire broad article only a little better.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   11:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ahh, I see what you have done. You are citing a primary document and giving your own personal interpretation of it. This is problematic for two reasons - you should not cite WP:PRIMARY research when you draw conclusions in research unless you are reviewing lots of primary sources, and you should not synthesize your own interpretation. You added a lot of your own thought to this article in the sentences which have no citations; Wikipedia is not a place for WP:essays, so this is not best. What would be ideal is for you to find scholarly sources which talk about, for example, General Comment No. 14, and then for you to summarize what these peer-reviewed papers have said.
 * I recommend deleting every sentence you added for which you cannot provide a citation. If you start with a primary source, like General Comment 14 or any other document which needs to be interpreted, then never cite that document. Only cite secondary sources which interpret those primary sources.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   11:37, 30 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the appropriate response, then, is not deletion, but a more restrained restatement of key principles in these documents. You are right that original research and personal interpretation are not appropriate for Wikipedia, but I would respond that WP:PRIMARY itself states, "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge. I believe most of the statements included under this article fit that description, and I would welcome your commentary on any areas that you find to be excessively interpretive. Amolutrankar (talk) 17:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Peer review of Right to health
The following is a peer review of this article for the class we are enrolled in: To me, this looks very comprehensive! I would suggest that if there is other work done on this topic by bodies other than the UN/WHO/etc that you talk about it more (such as in the "Definitions in academic literature" section). I would also suggest adding more content to the "Human rights in patient care" section. The article is well-cited overall - more secondary sources could be helpful but nothing looks unsupported. Good job with NPOV, readability, and formatting. You could add images, but I'm not sure how necessary they are for an article of this nature. Overall, nice work. If you expand beyond a description of the policies surrounding the right to health, this article could be even better! Ktpost68 (talk) 05:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your feedback! I agree; future directions for this project should include examples of how a right to health is expressed in regional agreements and individual States' legal frameworks. I also agree that it would be ideal to expand the "Human rights in patient care" section, which mentions many pertinent sub-topics (access to information, quality of care, etc.) that merit further discussion and detail. However, the revisions you propose are fairly extensive (at least, they should be if they are to be done well) and may be out of feasible scope for a semester-long educational assignment. I do, however, encourage future editors of this page to consider these suggested revisions.
 * Amolutrankar (talk) 17:44, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Contribution review
Good job using your contributions to broaden the scope of the article. You seemed to have made sure that the right to health was covered from every perspective, and every viewpoint by a major organization was presented. There is the issue of primary sources, but you're obviously going to have deal with them given that they are where the right to health is codified. It would ideal if you could find a couple academic papers analyzing these sources and how they deal with the right to health, but that may not be possible. You do a good job of presenting relevant information from these sources without merely repeating what they say word for word, but also while not editorializing them and straying from what they say. Obviously, make sure that all ideas are cited. However, given that you are relying on just a few documents, you only need to link to them a few times. Even though you're not using the citation tool, I think the fact that you say what section in each document you are referring to whenever you make a claim really helps with finding the sources for your assertion.

I think this article could eventually be expanded to talk more about the theory and ideas behind why the right to health is important, as well as more on how it is implemented in countries. These contributions would probably require work from a number of editors and are probably beyond the scope of what you're doing. I like the idea of adding a section on criticisms, assuming legitimate criticisms of the right to health do exist. Overall, nice job! Bwl5 (talk) 06:32, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for these suggestions! I agree with your suggestion to include more academic analysis on the subject, and have accordingly expanded the "Definitions in academic literature" and "Criticism" sections to include this. As for the expansion you suggest to discuss the theory and ideas behind why the right to health is important, I did some digging around and found that the Philosophy of healthcare Wiki page covers this in detail. I'd welcome further discussion here on whether that would be an appropriate inclusion for this page as well, or if this goal would be best served by linking to the available content on similar Wiki pages.
 * Amolutrankar (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2013 Fall term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)