Andrew has been busy attempting to get this chapter off the ground. This chapter recently held another organizational meeting at which they showed the general PHR slide show. As well, Dr. Larry Schwab spoke to the students, regarding the US Campaign to Ban Landmines and other PHR initiatives. Juvenile Justice Initiative On Saturday, February 24th about 30 students gathered at Harvard Medical School to get a background knowledge on the juvenile justice system. Speakers included Tony DeMarco from Suffolk University School of Law, Dr. Richard Barnum from the Boston Juvenile Court Clinic, and Andrea Watson, a social worker specializing in juvenile assistance.
Plans are underway to begin a comprehensive program in the Boston area within the next year.
Pre-Clinical Training Building Lorraine Andreson invites those students who are interested to join medical experts and juvenile justice advocates for a training session to introduce you to the issues and problems with the current juvenile justice system and be trained on how to monitor the facilities from a health and human rights perspective. There are growing calls for more punishment and less rehabilitation. Juvenile justice advocates have argued that one of the most effective means of ameliorating the physical and mental conditions of detainees is through regular monitoring of conditions in facilities at the local level. Citizen monitoring highlights human rights violations, pressures those responsible for administering these facilities to end violations, and fosters development of a core of advocates to reform the system for the long-term. Physicians for Human Rights seeks to address this problem by engaging physicians, medical students and mental health professionals in periodic monitoring of conditions and health services for youth in detention facilities in several U.S. cities.