“Thank you for honoring our work by inaugurating a professorship in my name. Thank you for acknowledging the indelible links between human rights and public health.” -- Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu
Position Summary: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is seeking a dynamic and visionary leader to serve as the Director of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights. The successful candidate will be named the Desmond M. Tutu Professor in Public Health and Human Rights. The Center is a renowned interdisciplinary research and advocacy hub dedicated to advancing the understanding of the intricate relationship between public health and human rights and evaluating strategies to improve these conditions. The Director will be responsible for providing strategic direction, academic leadership, leading public health and human rights advocacy, operational management for the Center's activities, fostering collaboration, fundraising, and enhancing the Center's global reputation as a leader in this field.
About the Center for Public Health and Human Rights: Since it was established in 2004, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights has been a global leader in research, teaching and advocacy. The Center was designed to place human rights at the heart of public health, with the goal of helping to advance the health and dignity of some of the world’s most disadvantaged people. Its faculty, from the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, School of Nursing and School of Medicine, bring the tools of public health to investigate the impact of human rights violations on the health of populations, develop rights-based approaches to public health programs, and bring innovative and interdisciplinary thinking, analysis, and methods to understanding problems of social justice and equity. Their expertise includes epidemiology, social science, demography, implementation science, medicine, and law.
The Center brings these skills and values toward ending discrimination against and exclusion of LGBTQ people, sex workers, people who use drugs, women, and racial and ethnic minorities, and incarcerated people in public health policies and programs. Examples of key areas include enhancing access to essential reproductive health services, showing effects of and alternatives to punitive policies toward immigrants and refugees and disenfranchised and populations experiencing disproportionate incarceration, explaining the evidence on drug programs, supporting survivors of gender-based violence, and protecting the right to health in volatile situations including war and other situations of political violence.
The Center collaborates with partners throughout Johns Hopkins University and world, including academic institutions, international and domestic health and human rights organizations, and grass roots advocates, especially in countries where human rights are most under assault. Faculty members advocate in domestic and global forums, from the U.S. Congress to the U.N. Security Council.
Education in human rights and public health remains central to the Center’s mission. The Center administers a Health and Human Rights certificate program that is available to graduate students in the Schools of Nursing and Public Health, offers many human rights courses, and mentors students and fellows, including by engaging them in human rights research and policy.
Among key Qualifications –
· Terminal degree in public health, law, nursing, medicine, or social science
· Track record of research or investigations in health and human rights
· Experience in human rights advocacy
· Experience in developing a strategic vision and leading diverse, interdisciplinary teams
· Excellent management, writing, and communication skills
· Experience in collaboration with community-based and human rights organizations
· Commitment and potential for fundraising to grow the Center’s work
· Experience in supervising and mentoring students and early career professionals
· Interest in and commitment to teaching
