Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Pre-conference Seminar "How to Write a Good Policy Paper” Author(s) Mihaela Victorita Carausan National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest Romania Title Human Rights Protection through Public Policy Design and Analysis File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Mihaela Victorita Carausan Abstract A school of governance it should be recognized in the public and private sectors not just as an education provider, but also as an institution that break down barriers and collaborate with partners worldwide to tackle some of society's most pressing problems. Within our Faculty we have created last year a Transdisciplinary Center for Human Rights where we develop researches, monitoring and evaluation reports, but now we face a new challenge from our beneficiaries – public policy design. Romanian NGOs for Human Rights protection would like to have a more prominent voice within the public arena, would like to design and come on with their own public policies proposals and for this, most of the time, they ask us for help. The given policy advise is, most often, theoretical and not pragmatically, at the grassroots. Following these requirements, we must give them advises how to design their future policies and, moreover, how to analyse the public institution policies from human rights perspective. For building effective policy making, a clear perspective on both the problem and the best ways to address it is needed. As always, accurate evaluation of whether policy goals are going to be achieved is indispensable. In some cases, well-intended policies can have unintended consequences, and when you try to protect the human rights such an effect could break down the whole edifice. To maximize human rights program success, there should be high probability for the effectiveness of interventions with low probability for unintended negative consequences. To achieve such balance, it is important to have an adequate level of understanding the policy design. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a common neurological disease, and its etiology remains unknown, but researchers traced the association between MS and vitamin D deficiency. There are clear evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for MS and it has a direct effect in MS progression. Because most of the time MS is not diagnosed from early stages the Association for MS – Bucharest branch would like to design a national public policy for free access of all people (even if they are or are not ill of MS) to the Vitamin D level analysis. The intended result is that people will have the possibility to find out from early stage if they suffer of MS and also the MS patients will check and keep under control the disease. Multiple sclerosis is one of the world's most common neurologic disorders, and in many countries it is the leading cause of non-traumatic neurological disability in young adults. 90% of those diagnosed with MS have the relapsing-remitting form at onset and in Romania average age of onset is 22 years old. Furthermore, 60% of people with MS receive symptomatic treatments, but only 10% have access to public rehabilitation centers. The rights of an adult with multiple sclerosis are changed, he or she is an adult with disability and the public system must take care of them per se. As a research center for human rights we must not only review the human rights protection level of public institutions, we should also come over with policy proposals in order to build up an equal and equitable public sector.
