COVID-19 Inequities in India: A Human Rights-Based Approach for Assessing Health Risk Factors

India's poor health outcomes and healthcare system relative to other developing countries have long been a cause for concern for public health experts. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown where some of the fissures in the Indian health system are; specifically, the pandemic has shown how human rights violations adversely impact health outcomes. Drawing from COVID-19 outcomes, I answer the question of what optimal public health policy – rooted within a human rights-based approach to health (HRBA) – looks like in India. I operationalize an HRBA by testing for relationships between human rights violations and COVID-19 outcomes in India as a means of measuring how human rights impact health writ large. I find that numerous human rights violations have significant associations with COVID-19 outcomes, including prison overcrowding, poor living conditions, and the inaccessibility of health care. Based on my findings, I recommend that the Government of India take several steps to address human rights violations, including the utilization of open jails, adoption of a retrospective payment model for public health insurance, and the election of community leaders to public health programs. Finally, these recommendations culminate in the proposal for a new Ministry in the Indian central government: the Ministry of Health and Human Rights (MHHR).