Making the grade: a first attempt at a health and human rights report card

We propose a methodology to evaluate fulfillment of the human right to health, using eight health indicators as proxies. Each health indicator was plotted against purchasing power parity US dollars gross domestic product (GDP)/capita to control for wealth. Generalized linear regression was used to derive a "best fit" curve. An "expected" value for each variable was calculated based on the GDP/capita of each country. The observed (reported) value was then divided by the "expected" value to give a score for that variable. Scores for each variable were averaged to give an overall health-related human rights score for each country. We believe that this report card is an initial step in the development of an effective means of monitoring health and human rights and can become a useful tool to quantify the fulfillment of the right to health. We invite comment on the approach.