Prof. Brigit Toebes is a legal scholar with more than twenty-five years of experience in the international standards protecting health, with a strong emphasis on the role of human rights in health promotion and disease prevention. Since 2018, she is professor of health law in a global context at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen. Since September 2022, she is scientific director of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health. Recent research themes include the scope and implications of global health law, the NCD pandemic and the regulation of behavioural risk factors (in particular smoking, unhealty diets, and alcohol), the regulation of vaccination, and the role of law in socio-economic health inequalities.
Together with her PhD candidates, she founded the Groningen Centre for Health Law (former Global Health Law Groningen), which hosts around fifteen researchers focusing on various dimensions of health and human rights. She has published widely in legal, public health and multidisciplinary journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, Harvard Health and Human Rights, the BMJ, and Tobacco Control, and she participates in several international and domestic bodies (see below). Toebes conducted research in the field of tobacco control since 2016, with a particular emphasis on developing a human rights approach. She frequently acts as a consultant to international bodies, including the WHO and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. In 2022, Brigit was awarded the Legal Specialist Award by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). Key publications include Health and Human Rights (2022, 2e ed), Human Rights and Tobacco Control (open access), and Research Handbook on Global Health Law (2018).