Digital Commons Network^™

Innovative Virtual Wellness Interventions At An Academic Medical Center: A Pilot Feasibility Study, Ritika Baweja, Michael Hayes, Aditya Joshi, Raman Baweja

Journal of Wellness

Introduction: There is generally a concerning likelihood of burnout in healthcare workers. Given the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers, our institution identified the need for wellness interventions to foster adaptive functioning and mitigate burnout. The purpose of this pilot project was to assess the feasibility of virtual holistic interventions like meditation, art, laughter therapy and dance and their impact on overall well-being of physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs).

Methods: A series of 12 virtual sessions (art therapy, dance therapy, mindfulness-based practices/meditation and laughter therapy) were offered to providers over a 6-month period. Participants completed an online survey reporting …

Mass Incarceration In The State Of Louisiana And Its Impact On The Mental Health Of Incarcerated Men, Samika Treniece Miner

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Coded Social Control: China’S Normalization Of Biometric Surveillance In The Post Covid-19 Era, Michelle Miao

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article investigates the longevity of health QR codes, a digital instrument of pandemic surveillance, in post-COVID China. From 2020 to 2022, China widely used this tri-color tool to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. A commonly held assumption is that health QR codes have become obsolete in post-pandemic China. This study challenges such an assumption. It reveals their persistence and integration - through mobile apps and online platforms - beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency. A prolonged, expanded and normalized use of tools which were originally intended for contact tracing and pandemic surveillance raises critical legal and ethical concerns. Moreover, their …

The Bias Presumption, Bradley A. Areheart, Dave Hall

Scholarly Works

The American workplace is a fractured sphere of public life, in which white men often wield power at the expense of women and people of color. However, that power imbalance is no longer fully imbued with the active animus that characterized the first few centuries of American life; now, much of the damage done by discrimination is done structurally and implicitly. Consequently, the operation of bias and disadvantage is often invisible to employers and employees alike. The problem of discrimination in American life is thus larger and deeper than a few bad actors, and it will be impossible to solve …

Be Careful What You Wish For: An Overreliance On Telemedicine Could Harm Health Equity, Chinelo Diké-Minor

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Renewing Products Liability With Semen, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Under The Golden Arch: Permanent Neutrality And Authoritarian International Law In Turkmenistan, Madison Wall

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christianity And The Liberal(Ish) Income Tax, Andrew T. Hayashi

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

A Proposed International Legal Instrument To Combat Future Zoonotic Outbreaks, Mikiela Vazquez

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conference Proceedings - Symposium Insights And Implications: Advancing Regional Health Governance In The Inter-American System, Uchechukwu Ngwaba, A. M. Viens, Carlos Bernal, Karline Wilson-Mitchell, Michelle Amri, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Lisa Forman, Roojin Habibi, Mathieu Poirier, Oghenowede Eyawo, Sarah Fixon-Owoo, Innocent Ntaganira, Aeda Salim, Aminah Haghighi, Saumya Rai, Sandeep Kaur, Samrawit Kebreab, Sekinat Owoyemi, Kateryna Fomina

The Transnational Human Rights Review

This paper presents insights and implications from a two-day research symposium organized by the Regional Health Governance Study (RHGS) in 2024. The symposium examined how a regional approach to health governance within the Inter-American System, which comprises the Commission, the Court and the Pan-American Health Organization, can support the development of an equitable pandemic management system. It also examines the limitations of WHO-led pandemic response measures, identifies regional governance mechanisms, and offers policy recommendations to strengthen pandemic preparedness in the Americas. A qualitative thematic analysis using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was employed to assess barriers, facilitators, and …

Planning For Pandemic And Epidemic-Related Scarcity Of Medicines, Sapna Kumar

Articles

This chapter proposes an ex ante approach to tackling drug scarcity. Entities funding pandemic- and epidemic-related research should contractually require recipients to produce sufficient quantities of resulting medicines. The recipient would agree in the event of a future shortage to share its technology and know-how with a qualified third-party manufacturer, in exchange for compensation. Alternatively, funding entities could more broadly utilize dormant licenses, which activate in the event of a pandemic or epidemic, and which require rights holders to license out technology and know-how to alleviate shortages. Such provisions could go even further, integrating reasonable pricing assurances and ensuring access …

Centralizing Pharmaceutical Innovation, Sapna Kumar

Articles

The United States has a mostly decentralized system for promoting new medicine development. By offering patents and regulatory exclusivities, the government incentivizes pharmaceutical companies to invent and bring to market new medicines. Although this development model offers benefits for promoting innovation, it comes at a cost: Market-based incentives lead companies to prioritize research and development (“R&D”) for medicines that offer a safe path to profitability, as opposed to those that offer the greatest social benefit. In particular, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in R&D for critically-needed antibiotics and infectious disease vaccines—both of which are difficult to develop and provide …

A Comprehensive Study Of Patent Litigation In The Pharmaceutical Sector: Employing Network Theories, Graph Neural Networks, Agent Based Modeling, Bayesian Network Autocorrelation Models, Sreehas Gopinathan

Information Systems & Operations Management Dissertations - Archive

Understanding the dynamics and predictors of patent litigation is crucial in intellectual property management, especially given the competitive edge patents offer companies. Also, patents serve as both legal tools and repositories of innovation. This research delves into the complex world of patent litigation within the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on creating and applying advanced computational models to study litigation propensities. Techniques such as Graph Neural Networks (GNN), Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), and Bayesian Analysis of Network Autocorrelation Models (BANAM) are employed to explore the litigation phenomenon

From Deference To Indifference: Judicial Review Of The Scope Of Public Health Authority During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Wendy E. Parmet

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

For most of American history, courts have granted public health officials significant deference in construing the scope of their own authority. This changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the federal courts, where deference was replaced with skepticism as courts used the major questions doctrine to narrow the scope of public health powers. This Article examines this development and considers its implications for public health. Part II begins by recounting the long history of judicial deference to officials’ determination of the scope of their public health powers. Part III notes some of the problems with such deference and the pre-pandemic …

Authority To Improve Or Harm Health: The Public Health Front In A Decades-Long Battle Over Governmental Powers, Sabrina Adler, Sara Bartel, Heather Wong

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Backlash to local, state, and federal responses to combat COVID-19 has resulted in a small but vocal cohort of legislatures and courts trying to change long-settled and foundational principles of public health decision-making. They have shifted authority away from experts and local decision-makers, limiting emergency response in ways that also impact day-to-day public health efforts. Considering some examples of other recent preemption efforts, it is clear that COVID-era backlash is part of a longer-term deregulatory agenda, often framed as an effort to keep “big government” out of people’s lives and to preserve individual freedoms. However, the impact of such deregulation …

The Model Public-Health Emergency Authority Act, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The Uniform Law Commission recently approved the Model Public-Health Emergency Authority Act (MPHEAA or the Act or the Model Act). The MPHEAA grants governors specific and plenary powers to issue public health emergency orders while also ensuring executive branch transparency and accountability. The Act improves public health emergency preparedness by resecuring the legal foundation for states to respond effectively to future emergencies. However, more work is needed to enhance data collection and support vulnerable populations in emergencies.

This Article discusses the origins of the MPHEAA, key policy and drafting choices the Drafting Committee made in creating the MPHEAA, and the …

Doing More With Less: State Public Health Emergency Powers Post-Pandemic, Kelly J. Deere

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Three years after COVID-19 arrived in the United States, many governors and public health officials are equipped with fewer—not more—public health emergency powers than at the start of the pandemic. This may seem counterintuitive, considering that this virus has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and counting. While public health emergency powers were stripped on the federal, state, and local level, this loss is most acutely felt at the state executive level. Some state legislatures passed laws banning state and local governments from implementing a mask or vaccine mandate, while others amended their state emergency disaster statutes to limit the …

What Is A Public Health Lawyer Today? Acting For, Against, And Beyond Public Health, Scott Burris

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Health in America is not looking good. Unique among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the basic measure of national health—life expectancy—was declining even before COVID-19. Public health, both as a system of institutions and as a profession working to promote longer and healthier lives, is also struggling. The normal insularity of the field’s professional culture—including a lack of legal competency—helped undermine the response to COVID-19, which was dismal by any measure. At this difficult time, this Article considers three different ways public health lawyers can make a contribution to public health as a goal and as …

The Future Of Jacobson V. Massachusetts And Modern Substantive Due Process For Public Health Preparedness, Helen S. Webster

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Both the threat of public exposure to Ebola in the United States in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 prompted states to impose quarantine and mask mandates, among other responses, to protect the public’s health. When these state actions were eventually challenged on substantive due process grounds in courts across the nation, judges struggled to determine which legal test applied when reviewing the constitutionality of the state actions. On one hand, courts considered the precedent set forth in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts vaccine mandate as a valid exercise of …

Covid-19 And Access To Healthcare At The Crossing Of Race, Poverty, And Rurality, Shavonnie R. Carthens

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Black Americans make up 7.7 percent of the rural population in the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic many in this population found themselves at a unique intersection of inequity - being Black, poor, and residing in a rural area. Poverty is a known contributor to negative health outcomes and is a risk factor for death from coronavirus infection. The association between race and poverty, when examining infectivity and mortality rates of COVID-19, have disproportionately devastated Black Americans and other minorities. Further, research indicates the presence of a general “rural mortality penalty” wherein rural Black communities have higher death rates …

Covid-19 Pediatric Vaccine Authorization, Fda Authority, And Individual Misperception Of Risk, Joanna K. Sax, Neal Doran

Faculty Scholarship

Vaccines are one component to the public health strategies to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic. Hesitancy regarding COVID-19 vaccines in the United States has been problematic, which is not surprising given increasing overall vaccine hesitancy in recent decades. Most vaccines are administered during childhood years. Consequently, understanding hesitancy toward administration of vaccines in this age group may provide insight into possible interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy. The present study analyzed a subset of over 130,000 public comments posted in response to a notice of meeting of the vaccine advisory group to the Food and Drug Administration. The meeting addressed whether to …

Better Together: Building Community In The Lrw Classroom, Olympia Duhart

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Better Together: Building Community in the LRW Classroom emphasizes the importance of building a strong community within the Legal Research and Writing (“LRW”) classroom. A robust LRW community helps mitigate the stress associated with the course and equips students to manage the rigorous demands of law school. Given the challenges facing today’s law students and the unique challenges that characterize LRW, developing community in the LRW classroom should be a primary focus of effective law school training. This Article highlights the work of Thomas Hawk and Paul Lyons, who have studied the concept of “pedagogical caring” in higher education. The …

Eliding Consent In The Case Of Pandemic Countermeasures Authorized Only For Emergency Use, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

Four months after the first vaccines against Covid-19 became available to the public, and just as some universities announced plans to require inoculations, the Boston Globe quoted me as (alone) suggesting that mandates would conflict with federal law. When Congress created a special mechanism for the emergency use of still investigational products, it directed providers to reveal, among other things, that individuals remained free to decline such an intervention; only after full FDA approval of a medical countermeasure would this disclosure obligation become inapplicable. I have watched with dismay over the last three years as nearly everyone—including Executive branch officials, …

Does Federal Preemption Inoculate Us Against The Alarming Prospect Of State Vaccine Bans?, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

With growing resistance to vaccinations-premised, for instance, on misplaced fears of side effects or religious objections-it takes little effort to imagine that a state might act to prohibit some or all uses of a particular vaccine licensed by the federal government. Indeed, one year ago, legislators in a couple of states toyed with the idea of banning the primary vaccines against Covid-19, and, twenty years ago, half a dozen states effectively barred certain uses of one flu vaccine formulation. Although federal law should preempt at least some of these types of state restrictions, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution …

Compassionless Plea Bargaining, Julian A. Cook Iii

UF Law Faculty Publications

Too often, the guilty plea hearing process practiced in our federal courts fails to adequately ensure the validity of a defendant’s change of plea decision. Rather than engage in colloquies that are sufficiently in-depth and truly aimed at ascertaining voluntariness and defendant comprehension, critical details are frequently glossed over, and defendant guilty pleas are accepted without meaningful inquiry.

While academics have skillfully critiqued the Sixth Amendment and its trial-focused provisions, comparatively scant focus has been expended on the equally, if not more, critical change of plea hearing. Compassionless Plea Bargaining seeks to fill this gap with its focus on a …

Protecting Electronic Health Records After Dobbs, Francis, Leslie P.

Santa Clara Law Review

In the aftermath of Dobbs, states are taking dueling approaches to abortion prohibitions. Some states are enacting draconian criminal penalties for abortion providers or those helping patients seeking abortion services. Other states are doing all they can to protect patients receiving services within their borders and those who help them. Medical records are at the heart of these conflicts as they provide the best evidence of the patient’s condition and care provided. This article assesses the likely efficacy of state efforts to protect information in electronic health records from use in prosecutions or suits for damages in abortion restrictive states. …

Rethinking Health Law Architecture, Ani B. Satz

Faculty Articles

Neither the individualistic regulatory health paradigm nor the vulnerable populations approach of public health can provide the legal structure necessary to address the most pressing problems in health care today. These approaches fail to address conflicts between individuals and populations as well as challenges to qualifying for care and are in inherent conflict with each other, sometimes within the same statute. As health concerns become more global, it is necessary to move past a vulnerable populations approach to a broader population approach that respects individual choice but does not sacrifice community health for liberty interests.

Innovator Ecosystem Diversity As A Global Competitiveness Imperative, Margo A. Bagley

Faculty Articles

There are myriad ways that discrimination and bias can combine to profoundly limit inventor participation in the patent process. The utilitarian purpose of patents is to incentivize inventors to invent and disclose, so it makes sense to incentivize as large and as diverse a group as possible in order to maximize the likely output of innovative activity. This incentive is important in terms of our geopolitical aspirations as a country, but hopefully also because of our democratic commitment to provide opportunities for flourishing and reaching one's potential that are available to all.

Effective Public Health Communication In A Post-Covid-19 America: Lessons From Behavioral Science, Molly J. Walker Wilson

Lewis & Clark Law Review

As we emerge from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans are still reeling from the loss of life, the financial fallout, and the deep divide that continues to characterize our social and political institutions. Public health experts who were tasked with communicating facts and advice to the American public faced a daunting challenge, particularly because three distinct groups of Americans received messages differently. One group of Americans was receptive to scientific findings and amenable to taking recommended precautions. A second group was skeptical about the safety and efficacy of available vaccines, and genuinely confused or suspicious about the source …

Sharing Pathogen Sequence Data For Global Scientific Research Under The Nagoya Protocol To The Convention On Biological Diversity, Jerome H. Reichman, Carolina Dos S. Ribeiro, George B. Haringhuizen, Paul F. Uhlir

Faculty Scholarship

The Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has threatened to impede access to genetic resources and related data for cross-border scientific research. In principle, every use of genetic resources would require a set of contracts under the CBD, in a “bilateral” regime. The related transaction costs could overwhelm many transnational research undertakings, affecting even public health responses to outbreaks and epidemics. However, the Nagoya Protocol also offers a unique opportunity to resolve this dilemma, despite struggles to define the meaning and coverage of “digital sequence information.” The coverage of genetic sequence data under the CBD remains controversial …