USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health, Los Angeles, CA Videos

Take a look and see what our Sexual Rights for Social Change Academy Fellows are producing! 🎥✨ In this video, Michael introduces his take on sexual rights and shares how he sees them as fundamental to young people, and to everyone's health and well-being. 🔍 Curious to know more? This is just the beginning! Follow our TikTok and YouTube channels @sexualrightsacademy to stay updated on our Fellows' groundbreaking efforts to support the sexual health and rights of young people, and join the global dialogue on these critical issues. You can watch TikToks from the cohort here: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexualrightsacademy Additionally, check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiN-NoWqpzFFLf7zEl8vMyA #SexualRightsAcademy

Jonathan Cohen Oral History Clip
When Jonathan Cohen first traveled to the former Soviet Union for the Open Society Foundations, he found door after door flung open to him, with human rights defenders eager to explore praxis at the intersection of law and health. Along with colleagues like Tamar Ezer, he helped build the field of human rights in patient care. Hear more from his oral history on our YouTube channel and learn why, for him, the human rights paradigm is now under strain: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Sofia Gruskin Oral History Clip
For one of our final oral histories, we sat down with our own Sofia Gruskin, who has played a pivotal role in defining the interplay between health and human rights. In addition to mapping the early years of her work in the field, she shared with us the conversations that took place in the early days of COVID-19, and her efforts to spotlight the human rights abuses occurring under the guise of a pandemic. Watch more here: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Tahir Amin Oral History Clip
Tahir Amin arrived in India in 2004 in the middle of what he calls “the third biggest chapter in the access to medicines movement”. The subsequent years he would spend challenging patents and engaging in civil society activism that centered the voices of those in the Global South. We were lucky enough to sit down with Tahir and listen to his reflections and stories from 20 years of fighting systemic injustice in pharmaceutical drug development and access. You can hear more on our YouTube channel here: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Nina Schwalbe Oral History Clip
This week from The Health & Human Rights Oral History Project: Nina Schwalbe played an integral role in combating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Russian prisons in the 1990s. Schwalbe went on to spearhead the development of the Global Plan to Stop TB and shaped the role that the Open Society Foundations would play in public health for the coming decades. Hear more of her stories from inside the walls of Russian prisons — and how the strategies employed there laid the groundwork for the global fight against TB: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Carolina Gomez Oral History Clip
Ever wondered how Big Pharma calculates the exorbitant prices it charges for medicines? And why for a single medication, the price may vary between countries? This week, Carolina Gomez pulls back the curtain on the attempt to regulate medicine prices in Colombia and shares stories from her battles with pharmaceutical countries, as well as her work to make medicines available and accessible to all Colombians.

Françoise Girard Oral History Clip
In her oral history, Françoise Girard pays tribute to Judy Klein and her work at the helm of OSF’s Mental Health Initiative, where she oversaw the closure of institutions built to house individuals with developmental and psychosocial disabilities. Girard also illustrates how human rights became the lens through which all public health-related work was conducted, and how it opened new doors for OSF’s work globally. Watch more here: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Pavlo Kovtoniuk Oral History Clip
Pavlo Kovtoniuk’s first significant interaction with the Ukrainian healthcare system came when he broke his spine at 19 years old. “You needed to fight your own disease or condition, [but you] also needed to fight the system” he describes in his oral history. Kovtoniuk later went on to serve as the Deputy Minister of Health and played an integral role in reforming healthcare in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution in 2014. Watch more: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Robert Weissman Oral History Clip
Rob Weissman began his career as a public interest advocate and activist first as a magazine editor tracking multinational corporations, and later went on to help make HIV drugs widely available and affordable for the developing world. In his experience providing assistance to numerous governments on intellectual property and access to medicine issues, he knows better than anyone that "too much centralized corporate power hurts the world.” Watch more from his oral history on the IIGH YouTube channel now.

Maja Saitovic Oral History Clip
"Like all Europeans, we represent the patients, caregivers, and families—as well as the doctors, nurses, and paramedics—who make up Europe’s health systems. Yet on average, we will die ten years earlier than most Europeans,” Maja Saitovic once wrote of Europe’s 12 million Roma. The stigma and disadvantage experienced by Roma affects not only health outcomes, but economic opportunities as well, as Maja herself reflects on her time spent with the European Commission at the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection, where she was the first Roma intern. Hear more of Maja’s oral history in her highlight video on our YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Wiktor Dynarksi Oral History Clip
From 2017 to 2021, Wiktor Dynarski led a global grantmaking portfolio on intersex and trans health and rights at the Open Society Foundations, giving them a unique perspective on the advancement, and sometimes regression, of trans and intersex rights around the world. Hear them speak about the shifting landscape for trans rights in Poland, the rollback of Roe v Wade, and more in our newest oral history installment.

Marine Buissonnière Oral History Clip
Marine Buissonnière reflects on the Open Society Foundations’ work to close long-stay mental institutions in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and the incredible shift to a community-based model with former residents free to live on an equal basis with others. This latest oral history takes us back to the development of a groundbreaking Hepatitis C drug, the creation of the Roma Health Scholarship Program, the global response to the Ebola epidemic, and more. It’s not one to be missed.

Ioan Petre Oral History Clip
Ioan Petre and Sarah Evans have built their careers around advocating for those often at the margins of society. Both are guided by the belief that the best interventions begin with centering the experiences of a person and letting them define what they need. Hear their reflections and stories from the harm reduction space in our most recent oral histories — now on our YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Grace Kamau Oral History Clip
“Why would we need to criminalize women to get them to conform with what somebody expects us to do in terms of our own choices, our own bodies, our own lives?” Today we present two oral histories from leaders in the sex workers’ rights movement, Ruth Morgan Thomas (quoted) and Grace Kamau. Watch highlights from their interviews on our YouTube channel and learn more about the compelling reasons for decriminalization: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Sisonke Msimang Oral History Clip
“I think what we were always doing… is what we would now talk about as decolonization.” Sisonke Msimang’s oral history takes us from the nascent days of HIV activism in South Africa, to her work with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa supporting civil society organizations, to now reflecting on the parallels between the AIDS epidemic and COVID pandemic across continents. This is an oral history not to be missed. Watch more on the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Oanh Khuat Oral History Clip
In our most recent oral history installment, we travel back to the early 2000’s in Vietnam with Oanh Khuat, who charts the changes in her country’s perception towards people who use drugs — and why this is so significant. Watch more over on the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/HHROHP

Michèle Pierre-Louis Oral History Clip
“When you have that power, how do you use that power in order to emancipate and not to degrade?” Such is one of the many questions raised by Michèle Pierre-Louis in her riveting oral history that spans her years Prime Minister of Haiti and as President of FOKAL, la Fondation Connaissance et Liberté. Her full interview will be available come December, as one of the thirty inaugural oral histories within the Health & Human Rights Oral History Project.

Mikhail Golichenko Oral History Clip
In our latest oral history, Mikhail Golichenko charts his path from Russian law enforcement, to West Africa as a UN Peacekeeper, to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, to now leading human rights research and advocacy on drug policy with the HIV Legal Network. Watch more over on our YouTube channel!

Kasia Malinowska and Daniel Wolfe Orał History
“Sometimes people talk about harm reduction as a religion. I don't actually think of it as a religion. I think of it as a set of principles, but I think that the drug war and anti-drug ideology is actually closer to a religion where it's either like you believe or you are damned. And the reality of course, is that that doesn't help people who use drugs.” Daniel Wolfe (quoted) and Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch speak to their work shaping harm reduction policy and practice globally as a part of the Health and Human Rights Oral History Project. Their full interview, along with thirty others, will be available through USC Libraries in partnership with USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health in December.

Raluca Bunea Oral History Highlights
Below is a clip from Raluca Bunea’s oral history interview as a part of the Health and Human Rights Oral History Project. Raluca was one of several leaders the Open Society Foundations’ global work on mental health and rights within the Public Health Program. In her full interview, she speaks to her work in the disability rights space in Eastern Europe, mental health policy and financing, and more. Continue watching over on the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health YouTube channel.