Building a regional health agenda: A rights-based approach to health in South America

BELEN HERRERO; JORGELINA LOZA

Global Public Health

Routledge

Año: 2017

1744-1692

Attention to health policies in Southern regional organisations reveals anew ?social turn? in the regional political economy of internationalcooperation. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, it aims to establishthe extent to which the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) hasadopted and sustained policy interventions committed to addressingsocial inequities and asymmetries in relation to health, as indicated byregional policy agendas, policy development processes and resourcing.Second, it seeks to understand how UNASUR is mobilising national andregional actors in support of such policies. Our analysis of documentarysources and interviews leads us to draw the following conclusions. First,we argue that the UNASUR regional framework has a committed socialequity/rights focus in relation to access to health care and medicines,with a clear focus on reducing asymmetries between countries. Second,although UNASUR does not enforce national commitments on healthand medicines, it nonetheless plays a role in expanding domestic policyhorizons and policy capacities. In this respect, we find that UNASURinterventions lead to initiatives and actions aimed at implementingreforms, setting targets and defining goals nationally. Third, in globalarena, UNASUR enhances the visibility and ?voices? of the member states