Law Commons^™

Pandemic Governance, Yanbai Andrea Wang, Justin Weinstein-Tull

All Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented need for governance by a multiplicity of authorities. The nature of the pandemic—globally communicable, uncontrolled, and initially mysterious—required a coordinated response to a common problem. But the pandemic was superimposed atop our decentralized domestic and international governance structures, and the result was devastating: the United States has a death rate that is eighteenth highest in the world, and the pandemic has had dramatically unequal impacts across the country. COVID-19’s effects have been particularly destructive for communities of color, women, and intersectional populations.

This Article finds order in the chaos of the pandemic response by …

A Healthy Diet Of Preemption: The Power Of The Fda And The Battle Over Restricting High Fructose Corn Syrup From Food And Beverages Labeled 'Natural', Adam C. Schlosser

Journal of Food Law & Policy

America is unhealthy. America faces an obesity epidemic. The food consumed by Americans is making them fat. Americans, bombarded every single day by negative headlines like these, are becoming more and more health conscious. This newfound commitment to health is reflected in the food and beverages Americans purchase.

Health Care's Market Bureaucracy, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The last several decades of health law and policy have been built on a foundation of economic theory. This theory supported the proliferation of market-based policies that promised maximum efficiency and minimal bureaucracy. Neither of these promises has been realized. A mounting body of empirical research discussed in this Article makes clear that leading market-based policies are not efficient — they fail to capture what people want. Even more, this Article describes how the struggle to bolster these policies — through constant regulatory, technocratic tinkering that aims to improve the market and the decision-making of consumers in it — has …

Alternative Financial Services And Health Status In U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Courtney Hundley, Richard W. Wilson 8520196, John Chenault

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Abstract

Alternative financial services (AFS) such as, payday lenders, pawn brokers, tax refund loans, and check cashers are more prevalent in minority and lower income neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods also found to have disparities in health, compared to more affluent neighborhoods and communities. The focus of this paper is to determine if any relationship exists between use of AFS and health disparities.

Using data from a survey performed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), we compared four banking variables to several measures of health for 85 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) across the nation. The four banking variables all related …

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Achieving The Vision Of Global Health With Justice, Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet” (UN General Assembly, 2015, September 25, preamble). So pronounces the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations declaration on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted on September 25, 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If achieved, the SDGs will secure an improved level of health, development, and global justice. However, if the international community fails to live up to its commitments, an untold number of people will likely perish prematurely, people’s opportunities to thrive will be cut off, social …

Improving Rhode Island’S Health Care System: Lessons From The Cuban Model, Sarah R. Moffitt

Senior Honors Projects

Improving Rhode Island’s health care system: lessons from the Cuban model

Cuba is world renowned for its health care system. In regards to international health crises, Cuba is a leader in sending workers abroad and training doctors from all over the world. Within its own borders, the Cuban model provides free access to all citizens in which every individual has a primary care provider. Cuba boasts high vaccination rates, a long life expectancy, low infant mortality rate, and a population that is one of the healthiest in the western hemisphere.

The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the …

Global Trade Impacts: Addressing The Health, Social And Environmental Consequences Of Moving International Freight Through Our Communities, Martha Matsuoka, Andrea Hricko, Robert Gottlieb, Juan Delara

Martha Matsuoka

As ports and goods movement activity expands throughout the United States, a major challenge is how to make the adverse impacts of freight transportation a more central part of economic development, policy and planning discussions and transportation decision making. In 2009, faculty and staff from the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute of Occidental College and from the environmental health sciences and regional equity programs of the University of Southern California (USC) began a study of this evolving global trade and freight transportation system, focusing on areas in the United States where the system is expanding and where community, labor and …

The Reverberating Risk Of Long-Term Care, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The Fiftieth Anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid offers an opportunity to reflect on how American social policy has conceived of the problem of long-term care. In this essay, based on a longer forthcoming article, I argue that current policies adopt too narrow a conception of long-term care risk, by focusing on the effect of serious illness and disability on people who need care and not on the friends and family who often provide it. I propose a more complete view of long-term care risk that acknowledges how illness and disability reverberates through communities, posing insecurity for people beyond those in …

Slides: Best Management Practices For Oil And Gas Development And Comparative Water Quality Database Of Regulations Relating To Shale Oil And Gas, Matt Samelson, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment. Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project

Fracking, Water Quality and Public Health: Examining Current Laws and Regulations (March 20)

Presenter: Matt Samelson, J.D., Attorney, Consultant for Intermountain Oil and Gas Best Management Practices (BMP) Project, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School

34 slides

Enhancing Communication Between Scientists, Government Officials, And The Lay Public: Advancing Science And Protecting The Public's Welfare Through Better Multi-Stakeholder Interfacing, Clark J. Lee, Patrick P. Rose, Earl Stoddard Iii

Homeland Security Publications

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, James Ming Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Thomas Folsom, Timothy S. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank A. Pasquale Iii, Elizabeth A. Reilly, Jeffrey Samuels, Katherine J. Strandburg, Kara W. Swanson, Andrew W. Torrance, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Law Faculty Scholarship

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions. Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …

Fitness Tax Credits: Costs, Benefits, And Viability, Daniel M. Reach

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

As the number of overweight and obese Americans rises, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans need further incentives to stimulate lasting lifestyle changes. Tax incentives focused on exercise, which have been largely unexplored to this point, are an effective response to the growing obesity problem in the United States that would largely avoid the political opposition that tax policies focused on diet have encountered. In addition, they would also provide a more palatable solution for the taxpayer beneficiaries with a relatively low impact on government revenues. Viable tax incentives to encourage greater fitness include tax credits and sales tax breaks, …

Debra L. Delaet On Health And Human Rights: Basic International Documents, 2d Edition, Edited By Stephen P. Marks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published By Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center For Health And Human Rights; Distributed By Harvard University Press, 2006. 392pp., Debra L. Delaet

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Health and Human Rights: Basic International Documents, 2d Edition, edited by Stephen P. Marks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published by Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2006. 392pp.

Global Health And Global Hegemony, Randall Kuhn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As the new director of a unique graduate program in Global Health Affairs, coming from the world of basic research, I have been faced with the need to reconcile a central paradox of American power and hegemony: I conduct my work as an American citizen and often with U.S. government funding in the hope that it will make a positive or at least neutral impact on my world. Yet my government (not only under the present administration) initiates imperial adventures that cause untold damage to the health, welfare, and survival of individuals throughout the world.

World Bank, Adrienne Stohr

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The mission of the World Bank is to aid developing countries stabilize their economies through financial and technical assistance. The five dominant themes that emerge in a review of the World Bank literature are: health, gender, environment, globalization, and global governance. Each of these themes is broadly related to issues that consistently influence the larger issue of how the World Bank incorporates, rejects, or impacts human rights.

Children’S Health And Human Rights, Norie Nogami

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One of the first international attempts to improve the health of children was by Ms.Eglantyne Jebb, a founder of Save the Children, during the aftermath of the WWI. She drafted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the first international children’s rights document adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. Today, in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) we have a more comprehensive and near universal legal instrument for children’s rights.

Nutrition, Health And Human Rights, Monica Fish

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The last half-century has seen the development of a range of international instruments whose chief concern is the declaration and codification of basic human rights norms as agreed upon by the international community. Collectively these documents provide a normative and legal foundation for the human right to adequate food and nutrition, and freedom from malnutrition. A brief sampling of relevant language from these documents follows: