Health Law and Policy Commons^™

The Current, Scott K. Heysell

Journal of Wellness

No abstract provided.

Your Health Is In Your Hands? Us Cdc Covid-19 Mask Guidance Reveals The Moral Foundations Of Public Health, Cecília Tomori, Aziza Ahmed, Dabney P. Evans, Benjamin Mason Meier, Aparna Nair

Faculty Scholarship

In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, US public health policy remains at a crossroads. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) May 28, 2021 guidance, which lifted masking recommendations for vaccinated people in most situations, exemplifies a troubling shift — away from public health objectives that center equity and toward a model of individual personal responsibility for health. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky emphasized that "your health is in your hands," undermining the idea that fighting COVID is a "public" health responsibility that requires the support of institutions and communities. The social impacts of this scientific guidance, …

Working While Mothering During The Pandemic And Beyond, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Although combining work and family has never been easy for women, working while mothering during the pandemic was close to impossible. When COVID-19 caused most workplaces to shut down, many women were laid off. But many women were forced to work from home alongside their children, who could not attend daycare or school. Mothers tried valiantly to combine a full day’s work on top of caring for young children and helping school-aged children with remote school. But many found this balance difficult, leading to women’s lowest workforce participation rate in over forty years. And even women who did not quit …

Law, Criminalisation And Hiv In The World: Have Countries That Criminalise Achieved More Or Less Successful Pandemic Response?, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Schadrac C. Agbla, Marissa Joy, Kashish Aneja, Mara Pillinger, Alaina Case, Ngozi A. Erondu, Taavi Erkkola, Ellie Graeden

O'Neill Institute Papers

How do choices in criminal law and rights protections affect disease-fighting efforts? This long-standing question facing governments around the world is acute in the context of pandemics like HIV and COVID-19. The Global AIDS Strategy of the last 5 years sought to prevent mortality and HIV transmission in part through ensuring people living with HIV (PLHIV) knew their HIV status and could suppress the HIV virus through antiretroviral treatment. This article presents a cross-national ecological analysis of the relative success of national AIDS responses under this strategy, where laws were characterised by more or less criminalisation and with varying rights …

Calling The Shots: Balancing Parental And Child Rights In The Age Of Anti-Vax, Mahrukh Badar

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Vaccinations have become a contentious issue in recent times. Although there has always been opposition to vaccines, the internet has made it possible for pseudoscience and false information to spread like never before. This has led to alarming declines in vaccine confidence and adherence rates globally. High-income countries have seen the sharpest drop in vaccine confidence rates. Factors such as the complacency effect and religious objections likely explain this decline. Most countries have attempted to raise vaccine confidence levels by enacting laws that make vaccinations for children compulsory, with strict penalties for parents who refuse to comply. In addition to …

How Did The Youth’S Demand For Cigarette Products Respond To The Sin Tax Reform Act Of 2012?, Francis Ignatius L. Nieva

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The excise tax on tobacco products in the Philippines has been historically low making the product very accessible even for the youth. In 2012, a Sin Tax Reform Law was passed which increased the excise tax on tobacco products by almost five times its previous value. This price increase is projected to reduce alchohol and tobacco products consumption for all demographic classifications, especially the youth. This study estimated the price elasticity of cigarette demand of the Filipino youth using regression analyses on the pooled Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted in the Philippines for the years 2004 and 2015. Price elasticity …

One Child Town: The Health Care Exceptionalism Case Against Agglomeration Economies, Elizabeth Weeks

Utah Law Review

This Article offers an extended rebuttal to the suggestion to move residents away from dying communities to places with greater economic promise. Rural America, arguably, is one of those dying places. A host of strategies aim to shore up those communities and make them more economically viable. But one might ask, “Why bother?” In a similar vein, David Schleicher’s provocative 2017 Yale Law Journal article, Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation, recommended dismantling a host of state and local government laws that operate as barriers to migration by Americans from failing economies to robust agglomeration economies. But Schleicher …

J Mich Dent Assoc August 2021

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Every month, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists!

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover story on “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Dentistry: Understanding the MDA’s Perspective”.
• A feature article, “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Dentistry: Its Impact on Oral Health — You Can Make a Difference!”.
• A feature article from the Journal’s DEI series, “Welcoming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with Students Considering Careers in Dentistry”.
• A feature clinical article …

Disparities In Health Care: The Pandemic’S Lessons For Health Lawyers, Danielle Pelfrey Duryea, Nicole Huberfeld, Ruqaiijah Yearby

Faculty Scholarship

Population-level disparities in health and health care came to the forefront of U.S. public consciousness in 2020. As the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic stratification of COVID-19 infection and death rates emerged with chilling clarity, the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer focused millions of Americans on the complex, structural nature of inequity and its long-lasting effects.

Access to quality health care is a “social determinant of health,” meaning that it is one of the “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes . . . the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set …

Newsletter, Summer 2021

Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Tailoring Public Health Policies, Govind Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, many states and countries have adopted public health restrictions on activities previously considered commonplace: crossing state borders, eating indoors, gathering together, and even leaving one's home. These policies often focus on specific activities or groups, rather than imposing the same limits across the board. In this Article, I consider the law and ethics of these policies, which I call tailored policies.In Part II, I identify two types of tailored policies: activity-based and group-based. Activity-based restrictions respond to differences in the risks and benefits of specific activities, such as walking outdoors and …

Health Information Beyond Pandemic Emergencies: Privacy For Social Justice, Leslie Francis

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Moving beyond notice and choice is necessary if data are to be used responsibly for public health. But what directions might this movement take? Transparency and enactment of statutory limits on data uses are the two most prominent possibilities.

Transparency could require entities collecting, possessing and using information drawn from more than a specified number of individuals to make public disclosures of their information collection, possession, and use. There are models for developing such transparency requirements. The California CPPA could provide a model for delineating the size of entities required to make such disclosures. The requirements to disclose the results …

Debilitating Southeastern Community College V. Davis: Achieving The Promise Of Disability Civil Rights, Leslie Francis

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Disability civil rights law today continues to be shaped by troubling precedent created in initial decisions of the Supreme Court under the Rehabilitation Act. This article explores the first of these decisions, Southeastern Community College v. Davis, demonstrates Davis’ continuing impact, and analyzes how this impact may be addressed. Davis was a suit brought by a hearing-impaired student who had been refused accommodations and denied admission to the College’s nursing program. Critical litigation decisions on behalf of Davis at the trial court did not contest the College’s failure to provide accommodations that are common today, such as sign interpretation, or …

American Punishment And Pandemic, Danielle C. Jefferis

Faculty Scholarship

Many of the sites of the worst outbreaks of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) are America’s prisons and jails. As of March 2021, the virus has infected hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people and well over two thousand have died as a result contracting the disease caused by the virus. Prisons and jails have been on perpetual lockdowns since the onset of the pandemic, with family visits suspended and some facilities resorting to solitary confinement to mitigate the virus’s spread, thereby exacerbating the punitiveness and harmfulness of incarceration. With the majority of the 2.3 million people incarcerated …

Co-Creating A Legal Check-Up In A School-Based Health Center Serving Low-Income Adolescents, Lisa Kessler, Yael Cannon, Nicole Tuchinda, Ana Caskin, Christina Balz Ndjatou, Vicki W. Girard, Deborah F. Perry

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Problem: Marginalized populations experience health-harming legal needs—barriers to good health that require legal advocacy to overcome. Medical–legal partnerships (MLPs) embed lawyers into the healthcare team to resolve these issues, but identifying patients with health-harming legal needs is complex, and screening practices vary across MLPs.

Purpose of Article: Academic and community partners who collaborate in an MLP at a school-based health center (SBHC) share their process of co-creating a two-stage legal check-up for adolescents.

Key Points: Screening adolescents for health-harming legal needs is challenging. It took ongoing collaboration to refine the process to fit the needs of …

Covid-19 And Business Interruption Insurance: The Constitutionality Of Legislatively Mandated Coverage, William G. Arnold

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Opioid Crisis: Lessons For Health Reform, Valarie K. Blake

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Unilateral Burdens And Third-Party Harms: Abortion Conscience Laws As Policy Outliers, Nadia Sawicki

Indiana Law Journal

Most conscience laws establish nearly absolute protections for health care providers unwilling to participate in abortion. Providers’ rights to refuse—and relatedly, their immunity from civil liability, employment discrimination, and other adverse consequences—are often unqualified, even in situations where patients are likely to be harmed. These laws impose unilateral burdens on third parties in an effort to protect the rights of conscientious refusers. As such, they are outliers in the universe of federal and state anti-discrimination and religious freedom statutes, all of which strike a more even balance between individual rights and the prevention of harm to third parties. This Article …

If The Mask Fits: The Unconstitutionality Of Face Masks In Criminal Trials During Covid-19, Nicole Morrison

Mercer Law Review

Society, and certainly the courts, did not have time to prepare and adapt to the unprecedented COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic before the effects of the pandemic swept through the nation. The first coronavirus case within the United States was reported on January 20, 2020. The coronavirus spread at an alarming rate, and by March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Just two days later, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, declared a National Emergency. By January 10, 2021, the United States faced 21,761,186 cumulative cases and 365,886 total deaths from the coronavirus.

In …

National Focal Points And Implementation Of The International Health Regulations, Kumanan Wilson, Sam F. Halabi, Helge Hollmeyer, Lawrence O. Gostin, David P. Fidler, Corinne Packer, Lindsay Wilson, Ronald Labonté

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Health Regulations (IHR) and countries’ adherence to IHR guidance are coming under scrutiny and review. The IHR constitute a legal and governance framework that guides countries in responding to serious disease events while avoiding unnecessary interference with international trade and traffic. The IHR require States Parties to designate or establish national IHR focal points to facilitate information sharing about disease events with WHO, which makes these focal points critical in the effective implementation of the IHR within and between countries. On behalf of the State Party concerned, national …

Medical Error Disclosure: A Content Analysis Of State Legislation, Teresa Kathleen Sparks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Medical error is a public health problem in the United States (U.S.), causing approximately 250,000 hospital deaths per year. Health care leaders and policy-makers have identified medical error disclosure as one of many viable evidence-based solutions to address the problem of medical error – leading to increased transparency in health care, improved patient outcomes, potential medical malpractice cost reduction, and decreased health care provider distress and turnover. Unfortunately, health care providers are often hesitant to practice disclosure and are not required to do so in most U.S. jurisdictions. A qualitative inquiry using content analysis was conducted to understand the language …

J Mich Dent Assoc July 2021

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Every month, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists!

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover story on “Measuring Outcomes to Improve the Quality of Clinical Care”.
• A feature article, “Is Your Office Winning or Losing the Race? You Won’t Know Without Measurement”.
• The feature article, “The DQA and Quality Measurement in Dental Programs and Plans”.
• News you need, Editorial and regular department articles on MDA Foundation activities, Dentistry …

Sharing Technology And Vaccine Doses To Address Global Vaccine Inequity And End The Covid-19 Pandemic, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Lawrence O. Gostin, Madhavi Sunder

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although COVID-19 cases are declining rapidly in the US, they have reached record highs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The nucleus of the pandemic has shifted decidedly to the global south. The South-East Asia region and Latin America now represent 75% of global weekly deaths. On June 22, the Latin America region reported more than 1 million weekly new cases and 30 000 new deaths. Latin America has the highest deaths per capita, where deaths in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Peru have reached 177 to 564 per hundred thousand. The Africa region has had increasing numbers …

Preventing The Preventable: A Review Of Maternal Mortality Rates In South Carolina, Sydney J. Douglas

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Collecting Medical Debt Through South Carolina's Setoff Debt Collection Program: How It Works And Why It Doesn't, Dixie N. Mccollum

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judges As Superheroes: The Danger Of Confusing Constitutional Decisions With Cosmic Battles, H. Jefferson Powell

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Leave In The Time Of Covid: Examining Paid Sick Leave Laws, Jennifer B. Shinall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress (as well as several states') passed emergency paid sick leave legislation? The federal legislation, known as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), guaranteed most workers the right to eighty hours of sick leave at full pay while the employee was in COVID-19-related quarantine, plus an additional eighty hours of sick leave at two-thirds pay to care for another person in quarantine.' Congress felt compelled to pass such legislation because the United States infamously lags behind all other developed countries in guaranteeing paid health-related leave for workers. Of the top twenty-two highest …

Standard Racism: Trying To Use “Crisis Standards Of Care” In The Covid-19 Pandemic, George J. Annas, Sondra S. Crosby

Faculty Scholarship

Lowering the standard of care in a pandemic is a recipefor inferior care and discrimination. Wealthy whitepatients will continue to get “standard of care” medi-cine, while the poor and racial minorities (especiallyblack and brown people) will get what is openlydescribed as substandard care rationalized by the asser-tion that substandard care is all that we can deliver tothem in a crisis. (IOM 2009) Paul Farmer’s experiencein responding to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is ashocking, if extreme, example of how dangerous topatients this practice is. White patients were treatedwith the US standard of care, including transfer to theUS for treatment, …

An Uncommon Good

DePaul Magazine

DePaul College of Law alumna and civil rights attorney Karen Bass Ehler is dedicated to doing the most good for the most people. When an opportunity to join the Illinois Department of Public Health as general counsel during the COVID-19 pandemic, she left her corporate law position and took on the job. This article discusses her career trajectory, her daily work life, and her service to DePaul.

Fighting The Ftca: Medical Malpractice, Veterans, And The Va, Taylor C. Spillers

Arkansas Law Review

Dr. Levy, who served as the Chief of Pathology at the Fayetteville Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks (“Fayetteville VA”) from 2005 to 2018, diagnosed veterans with an error rate of 10%. The “pathology practice average is 0.7%.” Of the more than 3,000 cases Dr. Levy misdiagnosed, 589 were classified as “Level 3 (major) errors” which should always “trigger an [internal] investigation.” Unfortunately, no investigations ensued until Dr. Levy’s ultimate arrest, although the Fayetteville VA addressed Dr. Levy’s behavior repeatedly throughout his employment.