Alicia Yamin, JD, MPH

Biography

Alicia Ely Yamin, JD MPH is a Lecturer on Global Health and Director of the Program on Health Rights of Women and Children at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. Yamin has an additional appointment at the Christian Michelsen Institute (Bergen, Norway), where she is an Associated Senior Researcher.

Yamin’s 20-year career at the intersection of health, human rights and development has bridged academia and activism. From 2007 to 2011, Yamin held the prestigious Joseph H. Flom Fellow on Global Health and Human Rights at Harvard Law School. Prior to that, she served as Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights, where she oversaw all of the organization’s field investigations, and on the faculty of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Yamin has published dozens of scholarly articles and various books relating to health and human rights, in both English and Spanish, and has been awarded multiple distinctions in respect of her work on health and human rights. Her work is frequently cited by national and global entities, such as the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, as well as by courts enforcing health rights, and she was appointed as an independent expert by the Colombian Constitutional Court in 2011 in relation to the implementation of a major judgment that restructured the health system. Yamin provided expert input into the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health (2010), and served on the Advisory Panel for the 2011 Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health Commitments Report. She currently serves on the WHO Steering Group relating to Evidence of Impact of Rights-Based Approaches to Women’s and Children’s Health and the WHO-led initiative on equity in achieving universal health care.

Yamin is Chair of the Board of the Center for Economic and Social Rights. She also serves on the Executive Committee of Beyond 2015, the largest civil society coalition advocating for an inclusive and pro-equity future development agenda, and the Reference Group of the International Budget Project-Partnership Initiative. Additionally, she is on the Advisory Boards of the International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights, the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health, and several human rights organizations in Latin America.

Yamin is a graduate of Harvard College (summa cum laude), Harvard Law School (cum laude), and the Harvard School of Public Health, where she received both the Samdperil and François-Xavier Bagnoud Awards upon graduation.