Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques For Infertility: How Legal Barriers Harm Patients And Children, Kerry Lynn Macintosh

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Recent studies show that mitochondrial replacement techniques (“MRTs”) can help women with poor egg quality and repeated IVF failures get pregnant and deliver healthy children. Unfortunately, infertile Americans can derive no hope from this promising development.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) claims jurisdiction over novel assisted reproductive technologies. Fertility clinics and doctors who want to provide MRTs must submit an investigational new drug (“IND”) application to the FDA and wait for approval before proceeding with clinical trials. However, for the past decade, Congress has enacted an annual appropriations rider that precludes the FDA from acknowledging receipt of applications …

English Only: The Increasing Problem Of National Origin Discrimination In Federally Funded Clinical Research, Sarah Reckess

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act prohibits institutions receiving federal financial assistance from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. The term “national origin” includes people with limited English proficiency (“LEP”). The number of LEP residents has increased in the United States to over 10% of the residents in the most populous states (Texas, California, New York, Florida, and Nevada). Executive Order 13166, issued in 2000, requires all federal agencies to comply with Title VI by establishing guidelines that remove language barriers to federal programs, services, benefits, and activities. Additionally, it allows federal agencies to withhold funding …

The Weight Of Stigma, Rebekah A. King, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

Many health care providers, both implicitly and explicitly, perpetuate stigma in their treatment of patients classified as obese. While medical professionals understand that a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment is ineffective, patients classified as obese are frequently offered limited treatment options that fail to account for their unique needs. Access to a range of effective treatment options has historically been limited, but new GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines like Wegovy (semaglutide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide), have shown incredible promise in addressing the obesity crisis. Unfortunately, these transformative drugs are costly, in high demand, and not widely covered by insurance, rendering them inaccessible for …

The Asexual Assumption, Faith K. Whatley-Blaine, Michael S. Sinha

All Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion-focused dating shows such as ‘Love on the Spectrum’ feature individuals with developmental or neurological disabilities on a quest for love. Despite the focus on disability representation, these shows perpetuate stigma against the disabled community by fostering an infantilizing portrayal of individuals with disabilities. This portrayal undermines the premise of encouraging meaningful romantic relationships and reinforces the stigmatizing association of asexuality with disability. This framing aligns with the broader societal narrative that individuals with disabilities are incapable of or lack interest in participating in romantic relationships or physical intimacy.

The stigma that associates asexuality with disability extends beyond mere entertainment, …

Democratizing Health Data: A Legal Framework For Privacy-Preserving, Government-Led Ai Collaboration, Nicole Nigri

Cybaris®

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Health Equity, Govind Persad

Publications

Since 2025, health equity has faced increasing hostility from federal courts, agencies, and the executive branch. Yet health equity’s promise—to narrow stark health gaps along racial, economic, and other lines—remains urgent and widely endorsed by states, localities, and nongovernmental actors. Evaluating how health equity efforts might falter under or surmount these challenges requires understanding their legal underpinnings: the law of health equity.

This Article is the first in legal scholarship to comprehensively examine federal, state, and private sector health equity commitments. It reveals sustained societal recognition of health equity’s importance, while highlighting the need for more precise and actionable definitions. …

Things Humans Do: The Use Of Esds On Autistic Children, Jami L. Anderson

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

On March 26, 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a proposed rule (PR) that would ban the use of electrical stimulation devices (ESDs)—shock devices—for treatment of selfinjurious behavior (SIB) and aggressive behavior (AB). This PR was directed at Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC), a residential institution in Canton, Massachusetts, that treats children and young adults with profound intellectual and emotional impairments, most of whom are autistic. Medical evidence has well established that ESDs not only fail to treat SIB, but cause the rate and severity of SIB to worsen. This is the FDA’s second attempt to ban ESDs. …

Get Out Of Jail Free: The Monopoly Of Big Pharma & Drug Addiction, Melissa E. Morello

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This article analyzes the legal and social parameters of drug addiction and the opioid epidemic, arguing that pharmaceutical companies, lawmakers, and systemic institutions have effectively “gamified” public health, addiction, and their own accountability. It traces the historical trajectory of drug regulation, from early opioid use and racially motivated enforcement policies to the War on Drugs and the emergence of the prescription opioid epidemic fueled by aggressive pharmaceutical marketing. The analysis explores pivotal case law and legislation addressing addiction, highlighting the legal system’s struggle to reconcile criminal accountability with the recognition of addiction as a disease. Throughout this article, there will …

The Impact Anti-Abortion Laws Will Have On Domestic Violence Victims Post-Dobbs Decision, Elissa Schlissel Goldberg

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This paper will focus on the impact a total or near-total abortion law may have on domestic abuse and how male abusers may attempt to seek control by taking advantage of the law. This paper will first address domestic violence, specifically focusing on the different ways domestic violence can manifest and their definitions. Next, the paper will shift focus to abortion and how states have tried to limit a woman’s ability to access abortion. The paper will then move to focus on the connection between domestic violence and abortion, looking into the data from past researchers and the trends that …

Educational Inequality In Health Insurance Coverage Before And After The Affordable Care Act, Madelaine R. Adamich

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Health insurance and health care accessibility have historically been ongoing issues within the United States. Two key factors associated with the likelihood of an individual being insured are educational attainment and income. The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has been the largest overhaul of health care in the US to date, aimed to reduce disparities in health insurance coverage and health care accessibility. My research analyzes the extent to which the ACA succeeded in reducing disparities related to educational attainment. To examine the ACA’s effects, I utilize the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data from 2008 and 2015 …

A Matter Of Life And Death: Give Me All Of Your Money And I'Ll Give You Healthcare, Shilanka I. Lewis

Marquette Law Review

The Medicaid Estate Recovery Program (MERP) is a federal mandate requiring states to recover costs of long-term care and related services provided to Medicaid beneficiaries from their estates after death. This Article explores the core arguments supporting and opposing MERP, offering a balanced analysis of its ethical, legal, and economic dimensions. Proponents argue that estate recovery ensures fiscal responsibility by recouping taxpayer dollars and preventing wealth transfer from those who received public assistance to their heirs. Proponents contend that MERP upholds the principle that Medicaid is a need-based program and a payor of last resort. Conversely, critics argue that MERP …

Algorithmic Medicine And The Duty To Disclose: Informed Consent Through The Lens Of Radiology, Lee Rodriguez

Michigan Law Review

Informed consent is the law’s mechanism for protecting patient autonomy by requiring disclosure of facts that bear on the decision to accept or refuse care. Artificial intelligence now helps decide what is medically true for patients, yet informed consent law still assumes that diagnostic judgment is rendered by a human mind whose reasoning is at least in principle communicable. Radiology has become the leading setting for this tension. AI systems triage worklists, flag suspected abnormalities, and anchor first-pass impressions in ways that guide radiologists’ attention and, in practice, can coauthor diagnostic conclusions while remaining invisible to patients. When patients are …

Health Care Governance And Structural Exclusion In Florida: A Human Rights Analysis Of Access For Latinx Communities, Natalie Medrano

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Access to health care in the United States is a complex system shaped by statutory programs and the discretionary powers of state governance. This thesis examines how Florida’s healthcare system structures access through administrative design, with particular attention to its impact on Latinx communities. Although formally race-neutral, Florida’s reliance on Medicaid non-expansion, managed care delivery, and complex eligibility processes produces systemic barriers that limit access for low-income populations. Drawing on the international right-to-health framework articulated in General Comment No. 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, alongside Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), this study analyzes how …

Confessions In Cases Of Child Physical Abuse - A Capnet Study, Margaret R. Russell, Antoinette L. Laskey, Henry T. Puls, Suzanne P. Starling, Joanne N. Wood, Daniel M. Lindberg, Nancy S. Harper, Caitlin R. Mcnamara, Angela N. Bachim, Farah W. Brink, Lori D. Frasier, James D. Anderst, Porcia Vaughn, Kristine A. Campbell

Department of Pediatrics Faculty Publications

Objective

Prior research on confessions of physical abuse (PA) has explored mechanisms of injury. Little is known about conditions supporting a confession of abuse or how confessions may influence case outcomes.

Methods

This cross-sectional study of suspected PA in children age < 10 years at 10 centers participating in CAPNET, a multicenter child PA research network, included children with in-person Child Abuse Pediatrics (CAP) consultations between Feb 2021-Dec 2022 and excluded children without injury. Our focus was a confession of inflicted injury known to the CAP during clinical involvement. We compared child and clinical characteristics, out-of-home (OOH) placements, and arrests between cases with and without confessions. Multivariable models using generalized estimating equations (GEE) produced adjusted predicted probabilities (APP) clustering by CAPNET site.

Results

Confessions were known to CAPs in 115/4297 (2.7%) cases, with significant site variability. In a multivariable GEE model, confessions were more likely in cases with injuries with high-specificity for abuse (APP 6.0% vs 1.5%, p< 0.001), near-fatality (APP 5.5% vs 2.3%, p< 0.001), and older children (APP 4.8% vs 2.5%, p = 0.025). OOH placements and arrests were more common in cases with confessions. CAP awareness of confessions, OOH placements, and arrests did not follow racial or ethnic patterns seen in the US child welfare system. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with OOH placements and arrests but not CAP awareness of confessions.

Conclusions

Our findings highlight differences in case characteristics and outcomes where a confession is known to the CAP and raise questions about agency …

Monitoring, Oversight, And Learning In Medical Ai, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

When medical AI errs, it often goes unnoticed. If there’s a specific patient injury, and the link to AI is obvious, that problem might be reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but not always. And many other types of problems, like worse performance on specific groups or ineffective integration into health system workflows, simply don’t fall within the contours of regularized reporting. Even if they are noticed by the health system—far from a given—there’s no obvious way to share that information more broadly. Against this backdrop, there are justified calls for better oversight and reporting. But there’s the …

J Mich Dent Assoc January 2026

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Each month, the Journal of the Michigan Dental Association delivers news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. It remains the main publication reaching Michigan dentists and is available worldwide through ADA Commons. The January 2026 (Volume 108, No. 1) issue of the Journal is published in a print format to provide updates and insights for Michigan's oral health community and MDA members. Print editions occur every other month beginning with January.

This issue includes feature articles on Pediatric Dentistry and 2025 Life Membership recipients.

Regular monthly contributions include:

• Editorial …

Is Being A Shareholder ‘In Name Only’ A Problem?, Daniel Schulte Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This column addresses the legal risks for Michigan dentists entering "shareholder in name only" agreements with non-dentist entities. Michigan law requires dental practices to be owned by licensed dentists to ensure professional control over public healthcare. Arrangements where management companies or manufacturers can reclaim stock for a nominal fee effectively strip the dentist of true ownership. This lack of control can lead to ethical conflicts, such as pressure to sell specific appliances regardless of professional judgment. Engaging in such schemes may endanger a dentist's license by thwarting state laws intended to protect clinical independence.

Against A Medical Exception To Equal Protection, Govind Persad

Publications

Government regulations of medicine sometimes treat patients differently based on their race or sex. Does heightened scrutiny apply to such regulations—as is usual when law treats someone differently based on a protected characteristic? Or is there a medical exception to equal protection?

Recently, in United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld a law that restricted access to medical treatments for transgender minors. Though its holding did not rely on medical exceptionalism, its discussion reinvigorated interest in a "medical exception" to equal protection: that medical decisions are exempt from the searching review applied when governmental decisions consider protected characteristics.

For …

The Anti-Federalism Of Hr1, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The budget reconciliation bill signed on July 4, 2025 (“HR1”) weakened the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its core goal of near-universal health insurance coverage. To maintain 2017 tax cuts, Congress curtailed the ACA’s Medicaid eligibility expansion; simultaneously, HR1 limited the kinds of options states have been able to exercise within Medicaid while pushing the costs of deep cuts down to states. This essay argues that HR1 embodies an anti-federalism approach, and that anti-federalism is not the same as federalizing health reforms. In the past, Congress sometimes federalized health care or public health reforms to respond to …

Regulating Crisis Pregnancy Centers After Nifla And Dobbs: Controversies Over When Government Is Imposing An Orthodoxy About Abortion, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

How does this broader sense of Barnette’s proscription of government from imposing “what shall be orthodox” implicate governmental restrictions on reproductive autonomy? Battles over reproductive freedom centrally implicate objections that government is unconstitutionally imposing a gender orthodoxy. Arguments for a right of personal autonomy embodying an antitotalitarian principle of liberty are arguments for a right to resist governmental imposition of an orthodoxy— for example, an idea about the natural or traditional role of women as mothers together with a view about how best to respect the sanctity of life. Rights to reproductive autonomy, grounded in personal autonomy and equality, …

The Power And Peril Of The Aca's Universality At Fifteen, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the symposium "15th Anniversary of the ACA: A Health Equity Review," this essay explores the ACA's mix of private law and public law provisions that rendered measurable improvements in health equity and health outcomes, especially for populations that experienced longstanding health disparities before its enactment.  Congress’s central objective was near-universal health insurance coverage, and the ACA employed a variety of mechanisms to reach that goal. The law’s health equity successes grew from establishing a principle of inclusion across federal statutes. This principle, which I have called “universality,” centered a human right to health approach: No longer would …

Social Science Contributions To The Global Action Plan On Antimicrobial Resistance Management, Mathieu Poirier, Jaskeerat Singh, Isaac Weldon, Clare I. R. Chandler, Daniela Corno, Laura Valtere, Pedro Henrique D Batista, Daniel Carelli, Geneviève Boily-Larouche, Sonia Lewycka, Fiona Emdin, Kathleen Liddell, Timo Minssen, Ilaria Natali, Susan Nayiga, Iruka N. Okeke, Emmanuel Olamijuwon, Kevin Outterson, Julianne Piper, Kayla Strong, Jarnail Singh Thakur, Kednapa Thavorn, Maarten Van Der Heijden, A. M. Viens, Mary Wiktorowicz, Steven J. Hoffman

Faculty Scholarship

Social science research on antimicrobial resistance has gained traction in the last decade, employing a diverse set of theoretical perspectives to better understand topics ranging from antimicrobial stewardship to political coordination.4 As the action plan commitments will be updated in 2026, an opportunity exists to employ a broader social science scope to accelerate national antimicrobial resistance interventions.

In January 2025, the Global strategy lab convened leading antimicrobial resistance social scientists from a variety of disciplines to determine which new ways of understanding antimicrobial resistance could catalyse and incentivize action. Three conceptions stood out as important to revisions of the action …

Corporate Childrearing, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

With children influencing a trillion dollars in spending annually, corporations actively seek to shape children's identities in support of consumer culture and profit. Yet there are no scholarly treatments or theories of the legal relationship between children and corporations. Instead, scholars address individual industries such as food, social media, cosmetics, tobacco, or fashion, missing the structural role corporations play in children's identity formation. Family law evaluates child wellbeing interventions using a triangle to map the legal dynamics among child, parent, and state. This article adds corporations as fourth actors, reconceptualizing that triangle as a square. This square provides the first …

Regulating For Birth Justice, Jamille Fields Allsbrook

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Impacted persons have shared accounts of traumatic birthing experiences, and advocates have raised the alarm on the urgent need to advance birth justice. Despite this raised awareness, women and birthing people are still dying and suffering unnecessarily. Even more, systems are still structured to impede birthing choices, particularly those from marginalized communities such as Black and Indigenous women. Notably, over 80% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable, according to federal government data. Ironically, the same laws and systems that have created, perpetuated, and tolerated birth injustices can be leveraged to move the country towards birth justice. On the national level, …

Catching The Forgotten: Repairing The Safety Net For Cofa Migrants In The United States, Brian Aguilar

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Citizens of the Freely Associated States—the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Belau—are permitted to live and work in the United States without a visa under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA). Yet, for nearly three decades, COFA migrants were excluded from the federal public benefits safety net. This exclusion, a product of legislative oversight in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, devastated communities like the Marshallese in Springdale, Arkansas, who endured dangerous working conditions, poverty, and severe health vulnerabilities without access to critical federal benefits programs. While …

The Case Against State Emotional Support Animal Documentation Laws, Krista Wirth

Animal Law Review

Under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), a tenant with a service animal or emotional support animal (ESA) may request a reasonable accommodation from their housing provider to have their assistance animal live with them in housing that might not otherwise permit animals. In recent years, several states have implemented laws that aim to address “fraudulent” emotional support animals (“state ESA laws”). These laws limit the types of acceptable verifying documentation or place requirements on a healthcare provider’s ability to produce documentation to verify an individual’s disability and disability related need for a support animal—documentation an individual often needs to support …

Environmental Protection In War: Beyond Humans And Nature, Alexandra Huneeus, Pablo Rueda-Saiz

Articles

War is not just a human tragedy-it is an environmental catastrophe. Across the globe, armed conflicts leave behind oil-slickened rivers, poisoned soils, and forests reduced to barren landscapes. These harms last for generations, but they are not borne equally. The peoples who live most intimately with the land-drawing from it food, water, culture, and identity-suffer the most enduring losses. Their very existence as a people may be put at risk.

This Article asks: How have the laws of war addressed environmental destruction, and, more specifically, what protection do they afford to communities whose very existence is bound to the places …

Government And Insurance And Access (Cgia) Update, James Budd Mpp

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The MDA Board of Trustees has established its 2026 legislative priorities, focusing on dental loss ratios, assignment of benefits, and virtual credit card payment reform. Key issues include addressing the workforce shortage, student debt, and improving Medicaid anesthesia reimbursement. The update also tracks several House Bills, such as those regarding voluntary license surrender (HB 4929) and foreign-trained dentist licensure (HB 4921), which the MDA opposes to maintain standards. Despite a slow legislative session in 2025, the MDA continues to advocate for transparency in third-party litigation and updates to specialty advertising rules. These efforts aim to protect the profession and ensure …

State Medical Licenses Without Borders, Meighan Parker

Scholarly Works

Access to health care in the United States is undermined by a maldistribution of physicians, and state medical licensure remains a barrier to correcting this issue, despite legal reforms that attempt to streamline physician licensure pathways. Geographic distribution gaps can have serious consequences in rural areas, such as poor health outcomes, reduced access to care, and further entrenchment of health disparities.

On the bright side, physicians can potentially use telemedicine to help improve geographic distribution gaps through the provision of clinically appropriate, virtual care across state lines. But states have traditionally required physicians, even those who are currently licensed in …

An Analysis Of Pediatric Retinoblastoma Medical Malpractice Litigation, Victoria Miller, Alyssa D. Reese, Katherine Foote, Alejandro Navarro, Andrew Galfano, Christian Hietanen

Department Surgery Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Retinoblastoma is a cancer of the retina that is most commonly diagnosed in the pediatric population. Unfortunately, this cancer can spread, leading to poor outcomes such as enucleation. The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics of medical malpractice litigation associated with a diagnosis of retinoblastoma in the pediatric population.

METHODS: A search for all available cases associated with "retinoblastoma" in the Westlaw Campus Research Legal Database was conducted. This spanned from database inception to August 2023. Cases were included if there was a complaint of medical malpractice related to retinoblastoma present in a pediatric patient. Demographic …