A Discussion About the Past, Present, and Future of Global Health Law

Global health law is the part of international law that deals with health, ranging from the World Health Organization’s Constitution and International Health Regulations, to international human rights law, and international trade law. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, there have been moves to reform existing international laws and create new treaties to address the gaps within this framework.

Lisa Forman, University of Toronto

Lisa Forman, BA, LLB, MA, SJD, is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Global Health Equity, and Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She is an international human rights law scholar whose research explores how the right to health may contribute to reducing global health inequities. Dr. Forman has published widely in these areas, including in relation to global access to medicines; trade-related intellectual property rights; the Sustainable Development Goals; South African constitutional law; and global health equity.

Steven J. Hoffman, York University

Steven J Hoffman, JD, PhD, LLD, is the Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair in Global Governance & Legal Epidemiology, Director of Global Strategy Lab, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance, and the Vice-President of Data & Surveillance with the Public Health Agency of Canada. His research leverages various methodological approaches to craft global strategies that better address transnational health threats and social inequalities.

Benjamin Mason Meier, University of North Carolina

Benjamin Mason Meier, JD, LLM, PhD, is a professor of global health policy in the Department of Public Policy and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Meier’s interdisciplinary research—at the intersection of global health, international law and public policy—examines rights-based approaches to health. Working collaboratively across the Gillings School, Dr. Meier has written over one hundred articles on the development, evolution, and application of human rights in global health.

Uchechukwu Ngwaba, Toronto Metropolitan University

Uchechukwu Ngwaba, LLB, BL, LLM, PhD, is an Assistant Professor with the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. His research engages multi-disciplinary, comparative, and socio-legal methods in exploring complex questions affecting health governance frameworks in the Global North and South. Dr. Ngwaba draws from multiple disciplines (law, humanities, economics, medicine, etc.) to redefine problems outside disciplinary boundaries and explore solutions based on shared understandings of complex situations in the area of health.