Book reviews
Abstract
Public health & human rights: evidence-based approaches , edited by Chris Beyrer and H.F. Pizer, Baltimore, MD, The John Hopkins University Press, 2007, 470pp., ISBN 13: 978-0-8018-8647-8, ISBN 10: 0-8018-8647-3 As a doctoral student undertaking a research project that includes a health and human rights perspective, I approached Public health & human rights : evidence based approaches with some anticipation. The book, endorsed as a 'toolkit' for investigating the relationship between public health and human rights, brings together the perspectives of over 40 contributors with backgrounds in epidemiology, law, medicine and health advocacy. Certainly, given the theoretical nature of much of the contemporary health and human rights discourse, a compilation of practical approaches from such varied backgrounds is appealing. Edited compilations lend themselves to browsing, and a preliminary look through Public health & human rights -which is divided into three sections: 'contexts and cases', 'methods' and 'policy'-hints at an underlying orientation towards the research-policy-practice continuum and, in turn, the linkages that can be made across these different levels of approaches to public health. Similarly, the diversity of authors and editors-Beyrer is a molecular epidemiologist and Pizer a heath care consultant-sets the scene for a multidisciplinary undertaking, aimed towards