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. 2019 Jun;21(1):163-177.

Health Is a Human Right-at CDC?

Sarah S Willen  1
Affiliations

Health Is a Human Right-at CDC?

Sarah S Willen. Health Hum Rights. 2019 Jun.

Abstract

In 2013-14, the Smithsonian-affiliated David J. Sencer Museum at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted an original exhibition with an eye-catching title: "Health Is a Human Right: Race and Place in America." Given the American government's entrenched resistance to health-related human rights claims, the staging of an exhibition with this title at a museum described as the public face of CDC was striking. Taking this apparent disjuncture as point of departure, this article examines the origins, aims, and content of the "Health Is A Human Right" exhibition, which attracted nearly 50,000 visitors. Drawing on qualitative research findings, the article engages three interrelated questions: First, how can this exhibition, in this particular locale, be reconciled-if at all-with the absence of any firm right to health commitment in the United States? Second, what does the exhibition reveal about the "social life" of health-related human rights claims? Finally, what might we learn from the exhibition about the potential role of museums and museology in sparking public engagement with health and human rights issues, especially in settings where human rights have some rhetorical power but lack legal or political traction?

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
“Branding image” for the exhibition, featuring a 1947 photo of a racially/ethnically diverse elementary school class in San Francisco. (Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the David J. Sencer CDC Museum.)
Figure 2
Figure 2
Entrance to the “Health Is a Human Right” exhibition.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Opening panel of the “Health Is a Human Right” exhibition. The cover of the Heckler Report is displayed on the far left, accompanied by definitions of the exhibition’s core concepts (center).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Entrance to the CDC main campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The David J. Sencer CDC Museum occupies a large section of the building on the left.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Panel on structural racism. Key elements include an image of sociologist W.E.B. Dubois (far left), the cover of Dubois’s 1906 book The health and physique of the Negro American, and Dubois’s quote about Americans’ “peculiar indifference” to the health of black Americans (in red on the right side of the panel, displayed above a photograph from a 1946 protest against discriminatory housing policies in Los Angeles).
Figure 6
Figure 6
The exhibition’s section on economic opportunity highlighted historical moments of collective mobilization and activist effort, including the Memphis Sanitation Strike and the Poor People’s March, both in 1968.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Display case showing a “Health Care Is a Human Right!” poster from a 1995 march across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Exhibition panel themes
Figure 9
Figure 9
1977 poster by Rachel Romero announcing a public hearing about the forced sterilization of Latina women.
Figure 10
Figure 10
This display case, located centrally in the exhibition hall, contained a corroded water pipe and contaminated tap water samples from the San Joaquin Valley, California.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Enlarged version of the 1991 ACT UP postcard sent to James Curran, who was then serving as Director of CDC’s HIV/AIDS Task Force.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Postcards sent in 1991 to James Curran, who was then serving as director of CDC’s HIV/AIDS Task Force, by the grassroots activist group ACT UP, accompanied by flyers publicizing ACT UP gatherings. (Photo by the author)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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