This book deals with various facets of the human right to health: its normative profile as a universal right, current political and legal conflicts and contextualized implementation in different healthcare systems. The authors come from different countries and disciplines - law, political science, ethics, medicine etc. - and bring together a broad variety of academic and practical perspectives. The volume contains selected contributions of the international conference "The Right to Health - an Empty Promise?" held in September 2015 in Berlin and organized by the Emerging Field Initiative Project "Human Rights in Healthcare" (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg).

Sabine Klotz (Dipl.-Pol.) works in the Kraft-foundation-project 'Human Rights and Ethics in the Medicine for Elderlys' at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Heiner Bielefeldt (Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. h.c.) holds the chair in Human Rights and Human Rights Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Martina Schmidhuber (Dr. phil. fac. theol.) is a research fellow at the Institute for History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Andreas Frewer (Prof. Dr. med., M.A.) is professor for Medical Ethics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and European Master in Bioethics.