Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Supporting Healthy Futures: Capitalizing On Medicaid’S Epsdt Medical Necessity Standard, Teressa Colhoun

Washington and Lee Law Review

Youth mental health is in crisis. Children report increased rates of suicidal ideology, depression, and anxiety. Diagnosis rates soar. Pediatric mental health care remains difficult to access. When services are accessible, they are costly—often sending families into medical debt.

This Note discusses Medicaid’s Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (“EPSDT”) benefit. Specifically, it studies the EPSDT benefit’s creation, structure, and administration. This Note focuses on the context in which the EPSDT benefit operates, particularly how health care financing models impact benefit administration. It suggests that the EPSDT benefit has the capacity to address crucial gaps in pediatric mental health …

Puffing Away Parental Rights: A Survey And Analysis Of Whether Secondhand Smoke Exposure Is Child Abuse, Karly Huml

Journal of Law and Health

The steps taken thus far to protect children in public areas, custody cases, and in vehicles show the legislature's awareness of the chemical harms of secondhand smoke for children. This article will analyze those steps and discuss what they mean for both parents' and children's constitutional rights. This article proposes that the legislature take a vital fourth step by including secondhand smoke exposure in child abuse laws. Section II of this article provides the history of smoking tobacco and its transition from a trendy social status to an unpopular, harmful habit. Section II also introduces the steps that have been …

Keynote: The Protection Of Lgbt Youth, Craig Konnoth

Publications

This keynote contains three parts. Part I addresses the intersection of two metaphors: medicine and childhood in LGBT Rights. Part II addresses the state regulation of LGBT youth. Part III offers Professor Konnoth's concluding remarks on the protection of LGBT youth.

Do Not Pass Go And Do Not Collect $200: Denying Medical Insurance To Parents Who Register Themselves Before Registering Their Children, Amanda Hamm

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Children's Health In A Legal Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have …

Ironic Simplicity: Why Shaken Baby Syndrome Misdiagnoses Should Result In Automatic Reimbursement For The Wrongly Accused, Jay Simmons

Seattle University Law Review

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS)’s shortcomings include the debatable science behind SBS theory and diagnosis—the questioning of which has grown more vociferous—and the arguably biased, discriminatory treatment of the accused. Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer notes that the evolving SBS skepticism and contentious debate has resulted in "chaos" in many SBS adjudications and within the medical and biomechanical fields, with the same SBS proponents and opponents continually crusading for and clashing over their beliefs. The issues surrounding the medical and biomechanical components of SBS diagnoses have been repeatedly examined and discussed, and are not the focus of this Note. This Note recounts those …

For The Love Of The Game: The Case For State Bans On Youth Tackle Football, Adam Bulkley

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

This football season, millions of Americans enjoying their favorite pastime might feel pangs of a guilty conscience. Years of scientific research into the long-term neurological effects of tackle football and a recent settlement between the National Football League (NFL) and thousands of retired NFL players have made football-related traumatic brain injuries (TBI) a topic of national conversation. Current and former NFL players and even President Obama have participated in the conversation, saying that they would hesitate to let their sons play the game for fear of possible brain injury. Because research has uncovered signs of permanent brain damage in players …

Sex, Science, And The Age Of Anxiety, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the question of whether the HPV vaccine should be mandated (for girls and/or boys) in the context of declining rates of childhood immunization, and the potential threat to public health that this decline poses. The article addresses two interconnected legal issues: first, is mandating vaccines to prevent the spread of disease constitutional under substantive due process and equal protection principles, and second, should parents be permitted to “opt out” of mandatory vaccination on their children’s behalf, either for all vaccines or those which prevent particular diseases. The article addresses these issues in the context of America’s growing …

Are Mothers Hazardous To Their Children’S Health?: Law, Culture, And The Framing Of Risk, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the psychosocial processes of risk construction and explores how these processes intersect with core principles of Anglo-American law. It does so by critiquing current cultural and legal perceptions that mothers, especially pregnant women, pose a risk to their children’s health. The Article’s core argument is that during the last four decades, both American society and American law have increasingly come to view mothers as a primary source of risk to children. This intense focus on the threat of maternal harm ignores significant environmental sources of injury, including fathers and other men, as well as exposure to toxic …

Forgotten Fathers, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Poor fathers like John are largely forgotten, written off as a subset of the unworthy poor. These fathers struggle with poverty – often with near hopelessness – within multiple systems in which they are either entangled or overlooked, such as child-support and welfare programs, family courts, the criminal justice system, housing programs, and the healthcare, education, and foster-care systems. For these impoverished fathers, the “end of men” is often not simply a question for purposes of discussion but a fact that is all too real. In the instances in which poor fathers are not forgotten, they are targeted as causes …

Special Populations: Mobilization For Change

Touro Law Review

This Article is based on a transcript of a break-out discussion which took place at An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State, held at Touro Law Center, Central Islip, New York, in March 2008. The discussion was moderated by Karen L. Nicolson, Michael Williams, and Toby Golick.

This Article assesses the needs of various special populations and the possible strategies and solutions to create change through enacting a civil right to counsel. The Article is intended to capture information and viewpoints of the people who participated in the break-out discussion …

Assessing Public Health Strategies For Advancing Child Protection: Human Trafficking As A Case Study, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

Ensuring the well-being of all children is one of the great challenges of our time. Despite concerted efforts in the United States to protect children, research reveals that millions of children suffer harm each year. Frequently, when policymakers and child advocates speak of “child protection,” they focus primarily on abuse and neglect in the home. Often, child protection does not contemplate violence against children in the community. The inside/outside-the-home divide is somewhat of a false dichotomy, however, as the two realms are interrelated. Children who suffer abuse and neglect in the home are frequently at heightened risk of exploitation outside …

Parents Should Not Be Legally Liable For Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children, Jay Gordon

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Should a parent who takes advantage of a personal belief exemption to avoid vaccinating a child be held liable if that child infects other people? No, because there are valid medical reasons for choosing this exemption and tracing direct transmission of these illnesses from an unvaccinated child to another person is virtually impossible.

The Problem Of Vaccination Noncompliance: Public Health Goals And The Limitations Of Tort Law, Daniel B. Rubin, Sophie Kasimow

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Imposing tort liability on parents who fail to vaccinate their children would not serve the public health and public policy interests that drive childhood immunization efforts. The public policy goals of vaccination are to slow the spread of disease and to reduce mortality and morbidity. Our country’s public health laws already play a substantial role in furthering these goals. Although application of tort law may be an appropriate response to some of the problems that result from vaccination noncompliance, there also is a need to cultivate public understanding of the connection between individual actions and collective wellbeing. It is doubtful …

Gambling With The Health Of Others, Stephen P. Teret, Jon S. Vernick

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The health and wellbeing of the public is, in part, a function of the behavior of individuals. When one individual’s behavior places another at a foreseeable and easily preventable risk of illness or injury, tort liability can play a valuable role in discouraging that conduct. This is true in the context of childhood immunization.

Unintended Consequences: The Primacy Of Public Trust In Vaccination, Jason L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The increasing availability of personal belief exemptions from state vaccination requirements is a growing concern among proponents of vaccination. Holding parents of non-vaccinated children liable to those they infect is among the responses proposed to maintain high vaccination rates. Even if motivated by a sincere desire to maximize the benefits of vaccination throughout society, such a step would be inadvisable, further entrenching opponents of vaccination and adding to the atmosphere of confusion and unnecessary alarm that has become increasingly common among parents of children for whom vaccination is recommended.

Challenging Personal Belief Immunization Exemptions: Considering Legal Responses, Alexandra Stewart

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Public health agencies and citizens should employ legal approaches to hold parents accountable for refusing to vaccinate their children. The judiciary would craft an effective response to defeat the threat posed by these parents. Public-nuisance law may offer a legal mechanism to hold vaccine objectors liable for their actions.

Choices Should Have Consequences: Failure To Vaccinate, Harm To Others, And Civil Liability, Douglas S. Diekema

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

A parent’s decision not to vaccinate a child may place others at risk if the child becomes infected and exposes others to the disease. Should an individual harmed by an infection transmitted from a child whose parents chose to forgo vaccination have a negligence claim against those parents? While I do not hold a legal degree and therefore cannot speak directly to issues of law, as a physician and ethicist it seems to me that the basic elements that comprise negligence claims—harm, duty, breach of duty, and causation—are met in some cases where parents forgo vaccination.

Evolutionary Theory And Kinship Foster Care: An Initial Test Of Two Hypotheses, David J. Herring, Jeffrey J. Shook, Sara Goodkind, Kevin H. Kim

Articles

Public child welfare systems increasingly rely on kin to serve as foster parents. This study tests two hypotheses concerning kinship foster care that have been formulated based on evolutionary theory and behavioral biology research. The first hypothesis is that on average foster children are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with kin rather than non-kin foster parents. The second hypothesis is that on average children in kinship foster care placements are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with some types of kin …

Induced Autism The Legal And Ethical Implications Of Inoculating Vaccine Manufacturers From Liability, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Vanishing Vaccinations: Why Are So Many Americans Opting Out Of Vaccinating Their Children?, Steve P. Calandrillo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Vaccinations against life-threatening diseases are one of the greatest public health achievements in history. Literally millions of premature deaths have been prevented, and countless more children have been saved from disfiguring illness. While vaccinations carry unavoidable risks, the medical, social and economic benefits they confer have led all fifty states to enact compulsory childhood vaccination laws to stop the spread of preventable diseases. Today, however, vaccines are becoming a victim of their success-many individuals have never witnessed the debilitating diseases that vaccines protect against, allowing complacency toward immunization requirements to build. Antivaccination sentiment is growing fast in the United States, …

Minors As Medical Decision Makers: The Pretextual Reasoning Of The Court In The Abortion Cases, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

By examining the Court's failure to consider the allocation of authority between parents and children in the critical realm of medical decision making, this article exposes the irrationality of the Court's acceptance of limitations on the abortion rights of minors and reveals the pronatalist thrust of the parental involvement decisions. The article begins by looking at how the Roe Court characterized abortion as a medical decision, followed by a discussion about the medical decision-making rights of minors. Rooted in this medical paradigm, the article then turns to the parental involvement cases to examine the Court's failure to consider the medical …

An Emerging Ethical And Medical Dilemma: Should Physicians Perform Sex Assignment Surgery On Infants With Ambiguous Genitalia?, Hazel Glenn Beh, Milton Diamond

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article discusses the development of a surgical approach to treating intersex infants and others with genital anomalies that began in the late 1950s and 1960s and became standard in the 1970s. Although professional literature has recently questioned the surgical approach to the treatment of infants, controversy surrounding treatment persists and the medical community now is divided. How sex reassignment surgery for intersex infants became a routine recommendation of practitioners and how parents were persuaded to consent to such radical surgeries provide a cautionary tale that is relevant to both medicine and law.

Health Care Access For Children With Disabilities, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the last twenty-five years, we have seen a remarkable evolution in attitudes and practice toward the treatment of children with disabilities. Children born with severe physical and mental anomalies are no longer routinely allowed to die. Many such children, along with those who become disabled later in childhood through illness or injury, receive aggressive life-saving medical treatment as well as continuing medical and habilitative care. Some children, particularly those whose families are affluent, receive substantial therapeutic and other supportive services that permit them to overcome their disabilities and function effectively in school and, later, at work.

Beyond State Intervention In The Family: For Baby Jane Doe, Martha Minow

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Newspapers and broadcasters gave major billing to the story. Headlines announced: "The Life or Death Question of Baby Doe;" and "Baby Doe's Parents Call U.S. Action Intimidating." The medical care decisions about this infant born with spina bifida, microcephaly, and other severe disabilities, not only attracted mass media attention, but also led to both state and federal court proceedings. Legislative hearings raised the issue of her care. Many commentators debated what should happen to this infant of Long Island parents. This article instead will ask: what was all the attention about?; why are cases like this so riveting?; and might …

Who Speaks For The Child: The Problems Of Proxy Consent, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Who Speaks for the Child: The Problems of Proxy Consent edited by Willard Gaylin and Ruth Macklin

On The Voluntary Admission Of Minors, Louis Lessem

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The past several years have been witness to dramatic changes in both the theory and practice of civil commitment. In the law, this development has taken the form of increased concern for the protection of the personal liberties of the mentally ill while among members of the medical profession it has been experienced as a part of the process of opening up the back wards. Legislatures in many states have responded by revising their mental health statutes to establish more rigorous standards for commitment, periodic review of the status of committed patients, and better procedural safeguards throughout the commitment process. …