title: Assessing the Impact of a Human Rights-Based Approach across a Spectrum of Change for Women's, Children's, and Adolescents' Health.
abstract: Global momentum around women's, children's, and adolescents' health, coupled with the ambitious and equalizing agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has exposed a tension between the need for comprehensive, multi-actor, rights-based approaches that seek to "close the gaps" and a growing economic and political imperative to demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, and returns on specific investments. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a framework to measure "results" in a way that offers a more nuanced understanding of the impact of human rights-based approaches and their complexity, as well as their contextual, multi-sectoral, and evolving nature. We argue that the impact of human rights-based approaches is best measured across a spectrum of change-at the individual, programmatic, structural, and societal levels. Such an analysis would allow for more accurate assessments of the cumulative effect of these changes. The paper also underscores the long-overdue need to better define the parameters of a human rights-based approach to health. This is an important part of the research agenda on human rights and health in the context of the SDGs and the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health, and amid calls for better measurement and greater accountability for resources, results, and rights at all levels. While this paper focuses on women's, children's, and adolescents' health, the proposed framework can apply as readily to other areas of health and provides a new frame of reference for assessing the impact of human rights-based approaches.
authors.affiliation: Technical Officer on Gender, Equity and Human Rights at the World Health Organization.
authors.forename: Rebekah
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Senior Strategic Adviser for Family, Women's and Children's Health at the World Health Organization.
authors.forename: Shyama
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuruvilla
authors.affiliation: Technical Officer at the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hinton
authors.affiliation: Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
authors.forename: Steven L B
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.affiliation: Assistant Director-General for Family, Women's and Children's Health at the World Health Organization.
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Magar
authors.affiliation: Assistant Director-General, Family, Women's and Children's Health, World Health Organization.
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bustreo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000067697:Adolescent Health; D002648:Child; D000067576:Child Health; D005260:Female; D014943:Global Health; D006291:Health Policy; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D016387:Women's Health