The Evolution of Global Child Rights

This compact book celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, a critical document that has shaped the relationship of adults with children worldwide. The document declares that all children must be fed, healed, protected, and given a safe place in which to develop fully.

The brief:

• provides background information about the Geneva declaration and the related Convention on the Rights of the Child;
• discusses a child's rights to human dignity; and
• identifies local and global threats to children’s rights as well as potential safeguards against these threats.

Among the topics covered:

• A Brief History of Children’s Rights
• Rethinking Healthcare for Children – Pivot to Human Dignity
• Children’s Right to Health in the US Child Welfare System: A Case Study
• Global Stakeholders in the Evolution of the Rights of the Child

The Evolution of Global Child Rights: Protecting the Vulnerable is essential reading for anyone who works with or cares about children to understand the historic and current context of the rights and role of children within our society including pediatric healthcare professionals, policy makers, child welfare professionals, and other global stakeholders on child health.

Kaitlyn Sacotte, MD is a Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine fellow at the University of Utah. She attended Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine for medical school and completed her pediatrics residency at Oregon Health and Science University before moving to Utah. Her research interests have centered around Adverse Childhood Experiences and social determinants of health and their effects on health. Dr. Sacotte's work has been published in journals such as JAMA Network Open and Journal of Adolescent Health. 

Brandon Tomlin, MD obtained his bachelor’s in biomedical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering and then attended medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He completed his residency in pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Madison and stayed an additional year to serve as Global Health Chief Resident. He is currently in his third year of his perinatal-neonatal medicine fellowship at the University of Utah. His research interestsare in medical device development, specifically for global health applications. 

Allison Judkins, MD is passionate about improving the care of our most vulnerable populations, both in the US and abroad, and sharing that passion with others through medical education. She has the privilege of doing just that in her clinical career as an academic neonatologist at the University of Utah, caring for our most fragile babies, and training the next generation of physicians to do the same. She has been the site lead in both India and Nepal for the last 5 years for ongoing health care improvement projects, including Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) initiatives as well as successful community-based educational initiatives in caring for high mortality populations, including low birthweight infants. Currently, she is working with academic partners in Nepal developing a sustainable HBB/Helping Mothers Survive (HMS) dissemination in Nepal’s most remote settings, as well as a quality improvement project assessing neonatal hypothermia and thermal care practices in the same regions. She has had the privilege to lead teams of students in multiple quality improvement and educational projects in collaboration with the governments and experts in Nepal and India, and mentor them through the delicate process of conducting sound, sustainable, collaborative projects with local partners. Through this work, she has been able to collaborate with the AAP in global educational and QI efforts, including the implementation of Essential Newborn Care (ENC) Now in Bangladesh and Nigeria, and Project ECHO in Ethiopia. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors in beautiful Utah with her husband and children. 

Luca Brunelli, MD, PhD, is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology at the University of Utah. After completing pediatric and anesthesia residencies, he worked as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Gaslini Children’s Hospital in Italy and lead a medical mission to the Philippines. After moving to the US, he completed a pediatric residency at the University of Rochester, and a neonatology fellowship at Duke University and Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Brunelli’s research interests have spanned from mouse and human genetics to genetic engineering and children’s rights to health and wellbeing, publishing in journals such as Circulation Research, Molecular and Cellular Biology, JAMA Pediatrics, and Nature Methods. His research has been funded by the American Heart Association, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. He has co-chaired the Genomics Focus Group at the Children’s Hospital Neonatal Consortium as well as the Bioethics and Legal Workgroup at the Newborn Screening Translation Research Network of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. He is currently pursuing a master’s in philosophy (ethics).