December 10, 2019

To the world, Jonathan Mann, MD, MPH, was the first head of HIV programs at the World Health Organization and an international champion of human rights. To the grateful faculty, staff and students of the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, he is also fondly remembered as our founding dean.

A visionary scholar, advocate, and scientist, the hallmark of Mann’s career was the degree to which he highlighted and advanced knowledge about the critical link between public health and human rights in the United States and around the world.

This year, on Human Right's Day 2019, we are pleased to announce yet another result of Mann’s valuable legacy – a new relationship between the Health and Human Rights Journal (HHR), a publication of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights (where Mann was the first director) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Dornsife School of Public Health.

“For the twenty-fifth year of the publication of the Health and Human Rights Journal, it is fitting that the FXB Center and Dornsife are announcing this partnership”, said Joe Amon, PhD, clinical professor and director of the Office of Global Health at Dornsife. “The Health and Human Rights Journal, from its start, helped to advance scholarship on the right to health and to examine how health rights can be operationalized and how they can promote accountability. I’m looking forward to a close partnership with the FXB Center and the opportunity to be a part of the next phase of the Journal’s history.”

This new partnership not only celebrates the shared history of the two schools, it is also an opportunity for both institutions to communicate, through the journal, in ways that will increase the impact of each institution’s work advancing research, practice and important discussions about health and human rights, while moving forward with Mann’s original mission for the journal.

Mann said, the journal should “inform and expand the space within which ideas about the intersection between health and human rights can venture forth into the world, to be cited and criticized, debated and discussed, torn down and built up.”

Amon will now be an editor of the journal, joining Carmel Williams, PhD, HHR’s executive editor. “I’m delighted at our new partnership with Dornsife, which is already leading to exciting editorial developments in the Journal,” said Williams. “As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, it is an apt time to re-invigorate the Journal’s commitment to promote the voices of advocates, scholars, and practitioners in health and human rights.” Their debut publication is the December 2019 issue, and it promotes a new series of Viewpoints commemorating Mann’s legacy.

For the special issue, Ana Diez Roux, MD, PhD, MPH, dean of the Dornsife school, Mary T. Bassett, MD, director of the FXB Center, and Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, editor-in-chief of HHR, join Amon and Williams in a commentary reflecting on the journal’s history and the path the human rights movement has taken over the past 25 years.

Amon is also launching a new Jonathan Mann Global Health and Human Rights Initiative at Dornsife to host visiting global health and human rights scholars, provide technical support to human rights organizations, support student training and engagement in rights-based advocacy, and conduct research on health and human rights.