Law Commons^™

Foreword: Probing The Intersection Of Climate Change And Public Health, Ana Santos Rutschman

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Finding The Cluster: Balancing Privacy And Public Health Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jessie L. Bekker

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

More than 800,000 Americans have died and more than fifty-seven million sickened since March 2020 from the COVID-19 virus and its highly contagious variants. Public health officials urged the public to mask up, socially distance, and stay home in order to curb the virus’ spread in the early months of the pandemic before a vaccine was approved. Meanwhile, those same officials blocked access to valuable information pinpointing areas of disease concentration—“hotspots”—which could have alerted members of the public of locations to avoid. Those officials generally—and usually incorrectly—cited the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as grounds for …

The Urban Trauma Drama: The Intersecting Path Of Criminal Justice And Public Health Revealed During The Covid-19 Pandemic, José Felipé Anderson

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Our society often operates under the delusion that more incarceration in urban areas will make us safer. Crowded cities and the problems for its inhabitants are not new. Those problems often fall more heavily on minority groups. Failed education, healthcare unavailability, and a lack of decent housing have made it difficult for cities to cope with addiction and crime. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the issues in the criminal system harder to ignore. Decline of major manufacturing jobs in cities like the steel and auto industries removed key opportunities for those seeking to overcome poverty and raise families. Debilitating riots …

Balancing Public Health And Privacy: Lessons From Digital Contact Tracing For Covid-19 Vaccination Tracking Efforts, Carmel Shachar

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic has brough the tension between individual privacy and public health initiative to the fore, in part because many of the solutions to the challenges of the pandemic proposed are digital. The first year of the pandemic has revealed that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is both too restrictive of traditional public health activities but also underprotective of important categories of health data. The failure of digital contact tracing applications to make a difference in combatting the pandemic during its early stages also illustrates the tension between individual privacy and public health surveillance. In order to …

At A Covid Crossroads: Public Health, Patient Privacy, And Health Information Confidentiality, Stacey A. Tovino

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This essay summarizes and assesses the various bulletins, guidance documents, and notices of enforcement discretion released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services regarding the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other topics and actions, these authorities address the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the use and disclosure of protected health information for public health activities, waive the application of certain HIPAA Privacy Rule requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, and announce enforcement discretion regarding certain covered entities’ non-compliance with particular provisions within the HIPAA Privacy Rule. These authorities overwhelmingly, and appropriately, …

Resolving Tensions Between Disability Rights Law And Covid-19 Mask Policies, Elizabeth Pendo, Robert Gatter, Seema Mohapatra

All Faculty Scholarship

As states reopen, an increasing number of state and local officials are requiring people to wear face masks while out of the home. Grocery stores, retail outlets, restaurants and other businesses are also announcing their own mask policies, which may differ from public policies. Public health measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus such as wearing masks have the potential to greatly benefit millions of Americans with disabilities, who are particularly vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. But certain disabilities may make it difficult or inadvisable to wear a mask.

Mask-wearing has become a political flashpoint, putting people with …

An Argument For Explicit Public Health Rationale In Lgbtq Antidiscrimination Law As A Tool For Stigma Reduction, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe, M. Killian Kinney

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (inclusive of nonbinary), and queer (collectively, LGBTQ) community is experiencing health inequities at alarming rates. From behavioral health issues, to violence issues, to increased rates of homelessness, structural stigma impacts LGBTQ communities at a disproportionate rate. Suicide numbers are particularly concerning. The LGB community rate of suicide is two to three times that of the general population. For the transgender and nonbinary community, that number soars to nearly nine times that of the general population. In this article, we examine the social determinates of health impacting the LGBTQ community and the ways structural stigma supports …

Meat Processing Workers And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Subrogation Of People, Public Health, And Ethics To Profits And A Path Forward, Kelly K. Dineen

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing health injustices. People who are Latino/Latinx, Black, Indigenous or members of other minority groups have disproportionately paid with their very lives. The pandemic has also exposed the complex interdependence of worker health and well-being, community health, and economic security. Industries like meat processing facilities—with congregate and high-density workplaces staffed by workers who are already disadvantaged by structural discrimination—must reckon with decades of subrogation and exploitation of workers. During this pandemic, the industry has pushed that exploitation to a point of no return. Policies to protect workers need a reset to an orientation …

The Role Of Law And Policy In Achieving Healthy People's Disability And Health Goals Around Access To Health Care, Activities Promoting Health And Wellness, Independent Living And Participation, And Collecting Data In The United States, Elizabeth Pendo, Lisa Iezzoni

All Faculty Scholarship

Ensuring that the almost 60 million Americans with disabilities live as healthy and independent lives as possible is an important goal for our nation. This evidence-based report highlights efforts to better use law and policy to support and protect people with disabilities. Specifically, it examines how existing federal laws and policies could be leveraged by states, communities, and other sectors to reduce barriers to primary and preventive care; reduce barriers to local health and wellness programs; increase access to leisure, social, or community activities (and indirectly, to religious activities) for individuals with disabilities; and generate better disability data needed to …

Social Work As An Important Collaborator In Transdisciplinary Public Health Law: Why Does It Matter And Where Does It Fit?, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Public health law has been a growing field over the last few decades. From the early days of its initial recognition as an academic and professional field to its more recent texts and treatises, public health law is continuing to define itself. To that end, Burris et al. recently published two works describing a transdisciplinary model of public health law and five essential services of public health law.

This article examines how the inclusion of social work in the model can be instrumental in forming better public health laws. The intentional inclusion of social work collaborators would supplement legal and …

Three Lost Ebola Facts And Public Health Legal Preparedness, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three key facts about Ebola Transmission should drive policy designed to control the risk of transmission during a crisis.

• Ebola—like HIV—is not easily transmissible human-to-human.
• Ebola has “dry” and “wet” symptoms, and only the wet symptoms threaten public health.
• A fever is Ebola’s canary in a coal mine; it provides timely warning of a coming threat.

Yet, during the U.S. Ebola scare in 2014, these three facts were lost. Unnecessary quarantine, stigma, and burden on those exposed to Ebola resulted, including especially for those who volunteered to fight the disease at its source abroad. Tragically, the law permitted these injustices …

Evidence-Based Public Health Is The Answer To Increasing American Childhood Vaccination Rates, Not Legislative Fortitude, Molly F. Anderson

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

After recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease across the United States, some states have responded by removing non-medical exemptions. State legislatures that remove non-medical exemptions do so with the hope of increasing vaccination rates. However, there are serious concerns about this knee-jerk legislative reaction. Removing non-medical exemptions can lead to anti-vaccination sentiment and interference with parental autonomy.

This article argues that instead of removing non-medical exemptions, states should implement evidence-based public health solutions in order to increase vaccination rates. One example of an evidence-based solution is the Community Guide, a resource that contains reviews by a Task Force on a wide …

Collecting New Data On Disability Health Inequities, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Prior to the Affordable Care Act, disability was marginalized in data collection efforts, limiting our ability to understand and address significant health inequities experienced by millions of Americans. Now, for the first time, we can use these tools to collect valuable new data on the nature and extent of health inequities experienced by people with disabilities across the country.

This article argues that standardized health collection data is critical to health equity, and because of the ACA’s groundbreaking requirements for data collection of disability status and treatment of patients with disabilities, we now have the potential to identify, track, and …

Anticipating Hiv Vaccines: Sketching An Agenda For Public Health Ethics And Policy In The United States, James M. Dubois, Amanda Hine, Michele Kennett, Kayla Kostelecky, Joseph Norris, Rachel Presti, Kathryn Raliski, Jessi Roach, Adam Ruggles

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Disability: A Comparative Approach To Medical Resource Allocation In Public Health Emergencies, Katie Hanschke, Leslie E. Wolf, Wendy F. Hensel

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Life Sciences Dual Use Research Of Concern, Public Health And Safety, And The Doctrine Of Unconstitutional Conditions, Vickie J. Williams

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

New Governance In Action: Community Health Centers And The Public Health Service Act, Yolonda Campbell

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Impact Of Federal Law On Public Health Preparedness, Benjamin E. Berkman, Susan C. Kim, Lindsay F. Wiley

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Cross-Border Legal Preparedness: A Comparative Review Of Selected Public Health Emergency Legal Authorities In Canada And Mexico, Daniel D. Stier, María Guadalupe Uribe Esquivel

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Preemption And The Public Health: How Wyeth V. Levine Stands To Change The Ways In Which We Implement Health Policy, Shane Levesque

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Public Health Response During And After The Emergency: Lessons From The Hiv Epidemic, Zita Lazzarini

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Federalism, Policy Learning, And Local Innovation In Public Health: The Case Of The Supervised Injection Facility, Scott Burris, Evan D. Anderson, Leo Beletsky, Corey S. Davis

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.