The research the organization has done in the past year is calling for the closure of Guantanomo Bay and ensuring that the US accepts Syrian refugees. They have taken first hand accounts of individuals in both circumstances. They provide annual reports for each year of the work they have accomplished these reports are extensive and explain what human rights were taken away and what PHR has done to help.
Their membership consists of scientists, healthcare professionals and doctors.
The data/reports they have collected to support their approach to help disaster include annual reports and newsletters that define the issues they are currently focusing on: what it includes, how one person can help. Their website also includes resources that describe the issue they are tackling their position and what is going on to prevent/cure the problem. Their website has experts, a university that specializes on 'empowering global communities' in order to be able to recoginze their lack of human rights. They also have a blog and first hand video accounts.
The aim of this organization is to use medicine and science to record and focus on mass atrocities and human rights violations. The organization was founded on the idea that health care professionals possess skills that pose credibility to those who are persecuted sexually, morally, socially and economically. As health care professionals, they have the opportunity to hold people accountable for their actions. Examples of this include torture, sexual violence, civil unrest- it is their job to protect civilians' basic human rights.
The funding that enables their work to go and help others is through many methods of donation, they recieve grants and investments.
This organization finds finding the proper evidence and persuading people that what they are advocating for is worth it, as methodologically challenging.
The events that motivated their ways of thinking about disaster and health was in 1981 a physician in Boston was called to go to Chilie to investigate the 'disapperance' of three physicians. Johnathan Fine entered the country and met the doctors who were psychologically terrorized. He heard their testimonies and recorded the,. It inspired him to go to Guatemala, Philipines and South Korea to educate about human rights globally. Dr Fine's visit caused the doctors to be released; he decided he wanted to help these people in situations about this full time. In 1986 Robert Laurence, Jean Mayer and Fine created Physicians for Human Rights.
This group works in social ecologies that are mostly controlled by the government; not what may be best for the people. but what is best for the government financially. PHR works to help those who social justice or human rights have been stripped for little to no reason. This shapes the way the organization views disaster because they believe that disaster can begin with one person who is not living up to their standards of life due to someone or something else. Disaster is a comprehensive network of interlocking pieces, when one piece is out of place it is defined as a place to start.
This group claims to have a new way of addressing emergency situations through using their process of stopping events that are already in progress through investigating the abuses, documenting evidence and stories and using their evidence as a call for action.
They rely on the internet, videos, blogs and first hand accounts in order to spread awareness.