Health justice and capabilities: A turning point for global health?

This essay discusses two important recent books on health justice and makes the case for their relevance to global health and to social and political mobilization for health reform. Health and Social Justice (Ruger 2010) and Health Justice (Venkatapuram 2011) take theories of capabilities and justice onto the substantive ground of human health. They substantiate and more fully specify the capabilities paradigm, its shared basis with health rights and relevance to health reforms and the growing global health justice movement. The recent turning point for global health invites a meeting point with the capabilities paradigm. The capabilities approach offers conceptual and practical potential for global health, linking normative, substantive and procedural claims for health justice and health rights.