Teaching

The Groningen Centre for Health Law (GCHL) is dedicated to teaching students about a range of diverse topics subject to research at our Centre. Our teaching broadly covers the interface between public international law, domestic health law, public health and medicine. Our Centre explores various health topics from a legal lens ranging from disease control, mental health, climate change and sexual and reproductive rights. To a large extent, our teaching reflects our latest research and findings. Our members teach at both the bachelor and masters levels.

A course that showcases the wide range of expertise our Centre holds is the LLM course ‘International Health Law’. In this course we identify why health is an international law issue and critically assess its impact on domestic public health policymaking. For example, we address disease control as a human rights issue as well as an issue engaging obligations under international environmental, trade and investment law. These international law obligations require States to adopt domestic legislation to prevent and control disease. In addition to binding obligations, we explore non-binding standards on health issues from the World Health Organization and other international standardizing bodies. The role and impact of these obligations and standards are critically evaluated and discussed in order to gain insight into the shortcomings of international law with regard to the protection of global health. In this course we encourage students to engage with these issues through interactive case studies where we task students with finding solutions to current global public health challenges.

The GCHL also contributes a number of guest lectures on global health law within various programs at the University of Groningen, the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and the University College Groningen (UCG). Additionally, the GCHL hosts an annual summer school on health and human rights. This summer school provides an introduction to the role of law in addressing global health challenges for an audience of university students and practitioners.