Digital Commons Network^™

The Increased Exposure To Coronavirus (Covid-19) For Prisoners Justifies Early Release: And The Wider Implications Of This For Sentencing—Reducing Most Prison Terms Due To The Harsh Incidental Consequences Of Prison, Mirko Bagaric, Peter Isham, Jennifer Svilar

Pepperdine Law Review

The risk of coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading in prisons is especially acute. This has resulted in an unprecedented number of prisoners being released across the world – including many prisoners in the United States. From the health, social, and political perspectives, this is a sound approach. This is especially the situation in relation to older prisoners and those who have not been imprisoned for serious sexual and violent offenses. Despite the large number of prisoners that are being released, the United States will still have the largest prison population on earth—and by a large margin. However, the coronavirus pandemic and the …

New Innovation Models In Medical Ai, Nicholson Price Ii, Rachel Sachs, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Law & Economics Working Papers

In recent years, scientists and researchers have devoted considerable resources to developing medical artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Many of these technologies—particularly those which resemble traditional medical devices in their functions—have received substantial attention in the legal and policy literature. But other types of novel AI technologies, such as those that relate to quality improvement and optimizing use of scarce facilities, have been largely absent from the discussion thus far. These AI innovations have the potential to shed light on important aspects of health innovation policy. First, these AI innovations interact less with the legal regimes that scholars traditionally conceive of …

Developing A National Strategic Plan To Address The Effects Of Climate Change On Human Health, Katherine Kettering

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

No abstract provided.

Mobile Methadone Clinics: A Necessary Step In Fighting The Opioid Epidemic, Laurel E. Via

University of Richmond Law Review

Part I of this Article will discuss the rise in opioid use disorder, the need for effective treatment, and the utility of methadone maintenance treatment options, as well as the history of the ban on mobile clinics. Part II will discuss the NPRM issued by the DEA on February 26, 2020, and explain the likely impact of the rule. Part III will provide an overview of the NPRM in its current form, explain its likely impact as written and show that mobile clinics are effective treatment options, and then argue that while a great start, the NPRM should be amended …

Rationing In The Time Of Covid And The Perils Of Anti-Subordination Rhetoric, Mark Kelman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

With surges in COVID-19 cases threatening to overload some hospital facilities, we must face the possibility that therapeutic treatments will need to be rationed, at least in some places. I do not propose any particular ideal rationing scheme but caution strongly against adopting a position that Professor Bagenstos advocated this past spring, rejecting rationing on the basis of patient life expectancy simply because life expectancy based rationing might threaten the factual interests of those with disabilities and might conceivably be implemented by those making judgments that were not simply inaccurate but grounded in biased, unacceptably discriminatory intuitions that some decision …

Biological Threats Are National Security Risks: Why Covid-19 Should Be A Wake Up Call For Policy Makers, Rep. Eric M. Swalwell, R. Kyle Alagood

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

A national security strategy is the “nation’s plan for the coordinated use of all the instruments of state power—nonmilitary as well as military—to pursue objectives that defend and advance its national interest.” Perhaps the most straightforward national security objective is to protect the country from foreign invasion, but national security involves other objectives that aim to protect people in the United States as well as their values. For example, protecting U.S. elections from foreign interference is a security objective that advances the nation’s interest in democratic governance. The outbreak of a highly contagious disease like COVID‑19 strikes at the core …

Missouri’S Public Health Response To Covid-19: Key Findings And Recommendations For State Action And Investment, Alexis Acosta, Marie-Anais Benoit, Ciara Conway, Dora Hughes, Jeffrey Levi, Anne Markus, Marsha Regenstein, Semret Seyoum, Jennifer Trott, Hope Van Bronkhorst

Health Policy and Management Issue Briefs

This report from the study, Strengthening Missouri’s Capacity to Respond to Public Health Crises, summarizes key findings that are relevant to strengthening the state’s and local public health agencies’ (LPHAs) capacity to respond to future public health crises. With funding from Missouri Foundation for Health, a George Washington University study team conducted 138 stakeholder interviews within public health and other sectors involved in the COVID-19 response, revealing several key opportunities for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). Missouri, like many other states, faced great challenges in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Missouri now has a singular opportunity …

Disposable Lives: Covid-19, Vaccines, And The Uprising, Matiangai Sirleaf

Faculty Scholarship

Two French doctors appeared on television and publicly discussed potentially utilizing African subjects in experimental trials for a tuberculosis vaccine as an antidote to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), denounced these kinds of racist remarks as a “hangover from ‘colonial mentality’” and maintained that “Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine.” The fallout on social media was similarly swift, with Samuel Eto’o, a Cameroonian football legend, referring to the doctors as “[d]es assasins” and several others questioning the motives behind testing a vaccine on the African …

Global Health Law & Governance Amidst The Pandemic: Evidence, Lessons, And Reforms, Julien Chaisse, Nilanjan Banik

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Post-Pandemic Privacy Law, Tiffany C. Li

Law Faculty Scholarship

COVD-19, the global pandemic that began in 2019, altered how we live our lives in just about every way imaginable. Some of those changes were obvious-for example, those who were fortunate enough to be able to work from home began working online-while other changes were more subtle. The latter category included unprecedented levels of data collection by governments and organizations purporting to collect information that would help stop the pandemic's spread. Given the deadly nature of COVID-19, few would question any public health efforts, no matter their impact on privacy. However, the lack of attention to privacy issues during the …

Privacy In Pandemic: Law, Technology, And Public Health In The Covid-19 Crisis, Tiffany C. Li

Law Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths and disastrous consequences around the world, with lasting repercussions for every field of law, including privacy and technology. The unique characteristics of this pandemic have precipitated an increase in use of new technologies, including remote communications platforms, healthcare robots, and medical Al. Public and private actors alike are using new technologies, like heat sensing, and technologically influenced programs, like contact tracing, leading to a rise in government and corporate surveillance in sectors like healthcare, employment, education, and commerce. Advocates have raised the alarm for privacy and civil liberties violations, but the emergency …

Prisons, Nursing Homes, And Medicaid: A Covid-19 Case Study In Health Injustice, Mary Crossley

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Community-Based Integrated Health Teams To Meet The Needs Of Vulnerable Populations In Times Of Crisis, Jessica Mantel

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Deprivation Of The Right To Counsel For Federal Pretrial Detainees During The 2019 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic, 54 Uic L. Rev. 659 (2021), Mary Vukovich

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Proprietary And Attribution Claims On Data Sharing During Infectious Disease Emergencies, Sam Halabi, Michelle Rourke, Rebecca Katz

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Vaccination, Disabled Children, And Parental Income, Karen Syma Czapanskiy

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 And Digital Contact Tracing: Regulating The Future Of Public Health Surveillance, Divya Ramjee, Pollyanna Sanderson, Imran Malek

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Digital surveillance tools are at the forefront of potential public health response strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States is in desperate need of a national-level contact tracing and exposure notification strategy to supplement traditional public health response efforts. This article addresses data privacy and security concerns, as well as epidemiological considerations, when developing digital contact tracing and exposure notification tools. It is both feasible and prudent that the United States establish a federal network for public health surveillance aided by digital tools, especially considering that waves of COVID-19 are expected to continue well into 2021 and while the …

“Trapped” In A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Restrictions During The Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror Earlier Attacks On The Abortion Right And How Judicial Review Failed To Protect It, Nancy L. Dordal

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Health Care Sanctuaries, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

It is increasingly common for noncitizens living in the United States to avoid seeing a doctor or enrolling in publicly funded health programs because they fear surveillance by immigration authorities. This is the consequence of a decades-long shift in the locus of immigration enforcement activities from the border to the interior, as well as a recent period of heightened immigration enforcement. These fears persist because the law incompletely constrains immigration surveillance in health care.

This Article argues that immigration surveillance in health care is a poor choice of resource allocation for immigration enforcement because it has severe consequences for health …

Public Health In The Opioid Litigation, Daniel G. Aaron

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Today, the opioid crisis is playing out in the nation’s courts. Litigants have taken a microscope to defendant opioid companies whose misconduct ignited and exacerbated the opioid crisis. As the litigation continues, one could imagine numerous ways its resolution could contribute to the end of a multi-decade overdose crisis and prevent future ones. Options include holding defendant companies accountable, releasing previously secret information for research on root causes of the epidemic, and prohibiting future misconduct through injunctive relief. Unfortunately, to date, the litigation has not been so capacious. Rather, the participants—judge included—have been preoccupied with rapid monetary settlement. Though understandable, …

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

Faculty Articles

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, …

The World Health Organization: A Weak Defender Against Pandemics, Chenglin Liu

Faculty Articles

Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) not act in a timely fashion to declare the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)? If it had done so, could the United States have heeded the warning and controlled the spread of the virus? Is the WHO's delay a factual cause of the calamities that the United States has suffered? This article addresses these questions. Part I examines the development of the WHO and its governance mechanism, major powers and limits, and past achievements and failures. It also explores how the WHO responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and …

Racism, Health Equity, And Crisis Standards Of Care In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Charlene Galarneau, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Long-standing and deeply embedded institutional racism, notably anti-Black racism in U.S. health care, has provided a solid footing for the health inequities by race evident in the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequities in susceptibility, exposure, infection, hospitalization, and treatment reflect and reinforce this racism and cause incalculable and preventable suffering in and loss of Black lives. This Article identifies multiple expressions of racism evident in the crisis standards of care (CSC) created by states and health care institutions to guide the ethical allocation of scarce critical care resources including ventilators. Contextualized within the broad landscape of health inequities pre-COVID-19 as well as …

Disability, Access, And Other Considerations: A Title Ii Framework For A Pandemic Crisis Response (Covid-19), George M. Powers, Lex Frieden, Vinh Nguyen

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

This Article examines how plans for emergency medical rationing during the COVID-19 pandemic may discriminate against those with disabilities. More specifically, this Article lays out the obligation of state and local governments under Title II of the ADA in creating and enforcing equitable and fair rationing plans during this COVID-19 crisis. For example, ventilator shortages are a common occurrence. The ADA, similar to other civil rights laws, operates so that a person with a disability is not denied a ventilator or other resources because of his/her disability. One reason that a person with a disability may be denied limited medical …

Covid-19, Doctors, And The “Realities Of Prison Administration” Part I: The Realities Of A Subject Matter Expert, Fred Rottnek

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

COVID-19 is still novel. As scientists continue racing to characterize the virus and its mutations, promote behavioral change, and optimize treatment and vaccination strategies, public policy makers shift their attention from one high priority population to the next. These spotlights have converged on one truism of the pandemic: COVID-19 infection, and all its sequelae, have magnified long-established social and structural inequities in U.S. institutions—including practices in jails, prisons, and detention facilities. While these facilities were recognized as early incubators of the virus, the response of the facility administrators and local leaders were at best uneven and at worst nonexistent. When …

Covid-19, Courts, And The “Realities Of Prison Administration” Part Ii: The Realities Of Litigation, Chad Flanders

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Lawsuits challenging prisons and jails for not doing enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 among inmates have faced mixed results in the courts: wins at the district court level are almost always followed by losses (in the form of stays of any orders to improve conditions) at the appeals court level or at the Supreme Court. This short Article tries to explain why this is happening and makes three comparisons between how district courts and appeals courts have analyzed these lawsuits. First, district courts and appeals courts tend to emphasize different facts in their decisions. District courts focus more …

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 …

Examining Sociodemographic Data Reporting Requirements In State Disease Surveillance Systems, Samantha Bent Weber, Amanda Moreland, Rachel Hulkower, Tara Ramanathan Holiday

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Law plays an important role in the collection of data related to disease and injury in a population. A robust system of laws sets out requirements for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of disease reporting data from local, state, territorial, and federal public health institutions. Occurrence of disease, including outbreaks of novel infectious agents like coronaviruses, influenza viruses, and others that have arisen in recent years, often require epidemiologists and others to understand not only the etiology and specific context of diseases and conditions, but also the trajectory of their spread among and across communities. Capturing sociodemographic data is critical …

Enforcing The “Safe And Sanitary” Environment Standard Within U.S. Detention Facilities To Save Children’S Lives, Anam A. Khan

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions within Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities are ideal for the transmission of infectious disease among CBP detainees. This is a dangerous problem. Between 2018 and 2019, at least six children died after acquiring infectious diseases while detained at CBP facilities. Migrant children are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are not fully developed and due to the negative impact of trauma and stress have on their immune systems. Infectious disease promulgation within CBP facilities also puts the American public at risk because of the potential for transmission beyond CBP facilities. Employees who are regularly …

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 …