Human rights (HR), as a social construction, transcend the idea of legal rights and are a universal ethical parameter of action, which must be followed by governments, institutions, and individuals. Contemporary democracies are based on this culture of human rights and public policies consolidated in this field of political action. International recommendations and efforts have emphasized the potential of this approach to address local and global public health challenges, to guide, strengthen and / or reform laws, public policies, and social practices.

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Adopting human rights and admitting them as universal, indivisible, and interdependent brings us important political, social, legal implications, and also in the development of scientific knowledge. Despite the sharing of several fundamental concepts and principles that link Health and Human Rights, the different languages, perspectives and tools for action bring theoretical and methodological difficulties to be overcome in the production of knowledge and its application in health policies, practices and programs.

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Among the countless challenges, the need for greater attention and relevance to social rights is highlighted by the international and national justice and health systems, considering the marked social inequalities and vulnerabilities, related to social and structural patterns, which continuously produce and reproduce human rights violations. Another relevant aspect is the insufficiency of the individualized approach to human rights violations and the need for the HR guarantee system to pay greater attention to the failures of state institutions and bodies that produce violations.

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Evidence of the relationship between the health conditions of individuals and the population and the guarantee of human rights; the several implications, possibilities and challenges highlighted; and the importance of expanding studies and other academic actions using this framework within the scope of Collective Health, led to the creation of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Human Rights and Health (LIDHS) in 2016. Conceived by the Institute of Studies in Collective Health (IESC) professors and students in the area of Social and Human Sciences in Health, it is a research group certified by CNPq.

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LIDHS is part of the Institute of Studies in Collective Health (IESC), of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and its general purpose is to develop research, expand and deepen the critical reflection on the different uses and theoretical and methodological contributions of Human Rights in Collective Health. In addition, it aims to foster social and institutional mobilization, promoting the transformation of social practices and health actions, based on human rights.

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Admitting interdisciplinarity as a key element for advances in the field of Human Rights and Collective Health, LIDHS brings together professors and researchers, technicians, graduate and undergraduate students from UFRJ, with different backgrounds, and external members of institutions and organizations civil society.

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Ruled by the inseparability of teaching, research and extension in academic training, LIDHS develops its activities in an articulated and organized manner based on three lines of action: Right to Health and Justice, Health Education and Care, and Global Health and Human Rights.

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In teaching and research, LIDHS works mainly in the Graduate Program in Collective Health (PPGSC-IESC / UFRJ), in the research line “Social construction of access to health: Interfaces between subjects, rights and policies”, in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities in Health, offering disciplines, courses and academic guidance (master's, doctorate and post-doctorate). It also contributes to the training and guidance of students in the Multi-professional Residency and Graduation in Collective Health courses at IESC / UFRJ. LIDHS has stimulated and developed conceptual and methodological studies of the relationship between health and human rights, emphasizing the interfaces between subjects, rights and policies and the interactions between the local and the global; and also empirical research on perceptions, subjects' representations of health laws, policies and practices, and their implications for citizenship, improvement of health conditions and access to the right and public policies of populations in situations of vulnerability, in an intersectional perspective.

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Within the scope of the extension, LIDHS has conducted courses, programs and actions aimed at professionals from different areas, organizations and social groups, aiming at the democratization of knowledge, the promotion and guarantee of citizenship rights, the strengthening of these organizations and groups, the improvement of public policies and the realization of human rights. Among the main achievements are the annual course on “Approaches to Human Rights in Health” aimed at law professionals, health and non-governmental organizations, and graduate students; the extension project “An image, a message... expressions of health professionals in the context of COVID-19”, which aims to help mitigate the suffering of health workers in the pandemic; and the development of technical material such as the “Human Rights and Health Collection” which has a dual purpose: the scientific dissemination of works developed by LIDHS in simple language and accessible to the general population, and to provide information and other references that can assist the reader in the search for ensuring their rights, improving and strengthening public health and justice policies.