Throughout the world, people who face stigma and discrimination are often left with substandard or no health care.

• In Eastern Europe, ambulances routinely refuse to answer calls for help from Roma communities.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, women who have been raped because they are suspected of being lesbians are denied post-rape care and receive further abuse from medical personnel.
• In countries of the former Soviet bloc, people with mental disabilities are forced to live in remote and dilapidated institutions, without access to education or health care.
• In Asia, people who are addicted to drugs are locked away in "rehabilitation" centers where they are flogged, chained to their beds, and forced to perform unpaid labor—with no genuine treatment in sight.
• In many countries worldwide, people with AIDS or cancer are left to suffer in excruciating pain, without access to affordable, essential medicines such as oral morphine.

The Open Society Public Health Program supports marginalized populations to fight discrimination and protect their fundamental rights. The program aims to build societies committed to inclusion, human rights, and justice, in which health-related policies and practices reflect these values and are based on evidence.

Support and advocacy from the Open Society Foundations is helping to improve the lives and health of vulnerable people worldwide.

• The Foundations are leading an international effort to denounce acts of torture committed in the name of health care, including forced sterilization, denial of pain relief, and abusive and compulsory rehabilitation.
• In Central and Eastern Europe, a medical scholarship program is developing a new generation of Roma doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.
• Throughout Africa, activists and patients are using innovative technology to document shortages of essential medicines and advocating for improved access to basic drugs.
• Working with governments in Eastern Europe, the Foundations are helping people with intellectual disabilities leave repressive institutions and move into community-based housing.
• The Foundations are supporting groundbreaking community-based treatment programs and advocacy efforts to protect the health and rights of people living with TB, especially those co-infected with HIV.

The Public Health Program works to strengthen the capacity of organizations and leaders who represent marginalized communities to advocate for better health policies and practices. It also pushes for greater government accountability and transparency in health care.

The Public Health Program consists of 10 core projects and initiatives and is primarily active in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia, and China. It has limited engagement in Latin America and other regions as part of its global advocacy efforts.

The Open Society Public Health Program includes the following projects:

Access to Essential Medicines Initiative
The Access to Essential Medicines Initiative focuses on three areas: monitoring and ensuring transparency of the pharmaceutical industry, fostering models of drug innovation that protect public health, and supporting fair and efficient mechanisms to ensure availability of medicines.

Accountability and Monitoring in Health Initiative
The Accountability and Monitoring in Health Initiative seeks to strengthen meaningful and sustained engagement by affected communities in the development, implementation, and monitoring of health budgets, policies, programs and practices; promote government accountability to citizens; and foster an informed and open dialogue about the governance of public health systems, provision of health services, and advancement of health and rights.

Global Health Financing Project
The Global Health Financing Project works to ensure that global funding for health is raised, allocated, and used in ways that meet the health needs of marginalized persons, strengthen civil society engagement in decision-making, promote and respect human rights, and lead to greater accountability and transparency.

Health Media Initiative
The Health Media Initiative's goals include facilitating the ability of the media to raise awareness about marginalized populations and stigmatized issues, and improving the capacity of public health NGOs to utilize media and communicate effectively with the public.

International Harm Reduction Development Program
The International Harm Reduction Development Program works to reduce HIV and other harms related to injecting drug use, and to press for policies that reduce stigmatization of illicit drug users and protect their human rights.

International Palliative Care Initiative
The International Palliative Care Initiative aims to increase public awareness about end-of-life care issues, provide palliative care education to health care professionals, make drugs for pain and symptom management easily available, and integrate palliative care into health care policies.

Law and Health Initiative
The Law and Health Initiative aims to foster collaboration among legal, human rights, medical, and public health practitioners to promote the use of legal remedies as a creative tool to advance public health.

Mental Health Initiative
To ensure that people with mental health problems and intellectual disabilities are able to participate in society with full respect for their human rights, the Mental Health Initiative promotes de-institutionalization and the development of sustainable, community-based services as a matter of policy, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Roma Health Project
The Roma Health Project addresses issues including widespread discrimination and human rights abuses against Roma in health care settings, the high burden of TB and HIV/AIDS, and the dual discrimination faced by Roma women.

Sexual Health and Rights Project
The Sexual Health and Rights Project aims to advance the human rights—including access to quality health care—of people who are marginalized because of their sexual practices, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

The Open Society Public Health Program Seminar Series enables advocates, policymakers, funders, government officials, and business leaders to debate and discuss crucial policy issues and to forge partnerships on emerging public health concerns.

Working with the American Austrian Foundation, the program also hosts Salzburg Medical Seminars for health care professionals. The seminars aim to develop public health leadership and expertise to improve the quality of health care worldwide.