Development as Health: Employing the Collective Right to Development to Achieve the Goals of the Individual Right to Health

Abstract

Although there exists widespread recognition that the shared benefits of economic development can improve health, health advocates rarely appreciate the connections between the right to health and the right to development. The collective right to development, transcending the right to health's focus on the individual, offers public health actors an opportunity to work through development discourses to obligate and empower states to allocate public goods for the public's health. This article concludes that health scholars and advocates could employ the right to development to ensure that development policies guide states in realizing the highest attainable standard of health, fulfilling underlying determinants of health through the strengthening of national public health systems.