Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights Projects

Terraced hills with stone walls, low houses and vibrant green trees, such as cypresses, against blue sky. — Battir, Palestine – UNESCO World Heritage Site. Credits: Cecilia Zhao

Featured voices

Health for Palestine (H4P) community health workers (CHWs) are members of refugee communities who provide long term treatment for community members suffering from chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, community health education, and patient accompaniment in accessing health care services in the Aida and Balata refugee camps. Dr. Bram Wispelwey discusses how H4P was created, the critical health needs it fills, and his role training and support community health workers. Mohammed Abu Dayeh, one of the community health workers Dr. Wispelwey trained, was featured in a New York Times video following his injury while providing care.

Please click here to view.

Photo of Dr. Bram Wispelwey and colleagues looking at rubble in the West Bank.

Salam, a fifth-year medical student at Al-Azhar University which was a target of bombardment, talks about the difficulties she faces as a student and describes the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, November 2023.

Please click here to view.

Image of colorful map focusing on Gaza and Israel.

Health and Human Rights Webinar Series

Please click here to view a full list of our past webinars.

Health and Human Rights Journal Special Edition on Palestinian Health

This special edition on Palestinian Health aims to explore the conceptual and material connections between settler colonialism and health in the Palestinian context. Themes include the manifestations of settler colonialism such as apartheid, the logic of elimination, and Palestinians’ right to health. Papers explore themes that include:

• The implications of integrating a framework of apartheid, settler colonialism, or structural racism with the HRBA to Palestinian health and wellbeing
• Decolonial and/or anticolonial means of achieving the right to health within the current Palestinian context
• The impacts of systemic, structural, or direct racism on the health of Palestinians

Read the HHRJ Special Section here

City of Jerusalem and Dome of Rock visible beyond concrete wall

The Past, Present, and Future of Palestinian Health: A Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar

The political prospects for Palestinians have never been more dire, with inevitable downstream impacts on health. While international community engagement that lacks a structural analytic approach risks exacerbating root causes of Palestinian ill health, depoliticized and humanitarian interventions remain the norm. In response to seemingly intractable structural barriers, the Radcliffe workshop seeks to contribute a broadly collaborative justice- and rights-based approach to improving and uplifting Palestinian health.

In this workshop, a small cohort of experts from a variety of backgrounds and specialties including health, human rights, law, social sciences, anthropology, history, and activism convened to discuss and develop a critical analysis of the current state of affairs, develop consensus statements and publications on the root causes of Palestinian health, and outline a radical future vision for the health of all Palestinians. A joint statement made by participants in the Radcliffe Seminar can be found here. A publication of the statement by Jadaliyya Reports can be found here.

Intensive Social Medicine Course in Palestine

In July 2023, the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights hosted its inaugural Palestine Social Medicine Course at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in partnership with the World Health Organization – office for the occupied Palestinian territory. The overall objective of the course was to develop critical engagement with and understanding of the social and structural drivers of health in Palestinian society.

Course Objectives

The course was designed to achieve the following core objectives:
● Educate health professional students on the social and structural determinants of health in Palestine, with a focus on real-world examples of barriers to care and strategies for their mitigation or resolution.
● Foster an appreciation for historically grounded and geographically expansive approaches to understanding the complexity of health inequities in Palestine.
● Introduce core lessons from established social medicine courses around the world, emphasizing the importance of:
○ Building equitable partnerships
○ Embracing discomfort as a catalyst for growth
○ Linking critical reflection with action through praxis
○ Cultivating intentional community
● Develop a growing network of structurally competent health professionals committed to addressing health inequities locally, nationally, and globally.

In August 2024, the program hosted the Second Annual Palestine Social Medicine Course in Amman, Jordan, in collaboration with the World Health Organization – office for the occupied Palestinian territory. A total of 28 students from the United States and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region participated in the course. The U.S.-based participants included students and professionals from fields such as medicine, public health, and anthropology. The MENA cohort included students from Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.