Benjamin Mason Meier is a Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Meier’s interdisciplinary research—at the intersection global health, international law, and public policy—examines rights-based approaches to health. Working collaboratively across the University of North Carolina’s Department of Public Policy and Gillings School of Global Public Health, Dr. Meier has written over one hundred articles on the development, evolution, and application of human rights in global health.

His recent global health governance volume, Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance in a Globalizing World (OUP 2018), examines the influence of human rights across the health efforts of the United Nations. Drawing from this comparative analysis of international organizations, Dr. Meier has published an academic textbook for the field of health and human rights, Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights (OUP 2020). To advance legal scholarship on contemporary global health issues, he recently launched a quarterly column on Global Health Law in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics and a foundational text on Global Health Law & Policy: Realizing Justice for a Healthier World (OUP 2023).

As a contributor to the development of rights-based global health policy, Dr. Meier serves additionally as the Past Chair of the Global Health Law Consortium, as a Senior Scholar at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, as the Founding Chair of the American Public Health Association’s Human Rights Forum, and as a consultant to international organizations, national governments, and nongovernmental organizations.

Dr. Meier received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Cornell University, his J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Cornell Law School, and his Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University.