Health Law and Policy Commons^™

The New International Health Regulations: An Historic Development For International Law And Public Health, David P. Fidler, Lawrence O. Gostin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Calibrating The Wealth And Health Of Nations: Trade, Health, And Foreign Policy After The Wto's First Decade, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One of the most important themes to emerge from the relationship between trade and health in the first ten year's of the WTO's existence is the challenge of achieving policy coherence. This task is a foreign policy challenge for WTO Members, which requires looking at the relationship between trade and health against the backdrop of the making and implementing of foreign policy. Policy coherence has generally become a major concern for foreign policymakers because post-Cold War trends, such as accelerating globalization, seriously challenge traditional foreign policy assumptions, practices, and institutions. Part of this new context for foreign policy involves the …

Health And Foreign Policy, David P. Fidler, Nick Drager

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

What Does Social Justice Require For The Public’S Health? Public Health Ethics And Policy Imperatives, Lawrence O. Gostin, Madison Powers

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Justice is so central to the mission of public health that it has been described as the field's core value. Our account of justice stresses the fair disbursement of common advantages and sharing of common burdens. It captures the twin moral impulses that animate public health: to advance human well-being by improving health and to do so particularly by focusing on the needs of the most disadvantaged. This commentary explores how social justice sheds light on major ongoing controversies in the field, and it provides examples of the kinds of policies that public health agencies guided by a robust conception …

Public Health And The Law: Responding To Terrorism And Other Public Health Emergencies In New York, Mark R. Shulman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"Tools For Success": The Trips Agreement And The Human Right To Essential Medicines, Melissa Mcclellan

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Law And Public Health: Beyond Emergency Preparedness, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines three questions: What is public health? What is public health law? What roles can lawyers play in public health? It first describes the breadth of public health, highlighting six trends shaping its future: social determinants of health; synergy between medicine and public health; shifts in focus from external (e.g., environmental and social) to internal (behavioral) risks to health; federalization of public health law; globalization of health risks and responses; and bioterrorism. Because the domains of law that apply to public health are equally broad, the Article next offers a conceptual framework for identifying the types of laws …

International Environmental Law, The Public's Health, And Domestic Environmental Governance In Developing Countries , William Onvizu

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Informed Consent And Public Health: Are They Compatible When It Comes To Vaccines?, Wendy E. Parmet

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Health As Foreign Policy: Between Principle And Power, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

From International Sanitary Conventions To Global Health Security: The New International Health Regulations, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In May 2005, the World Health Organization adopted the new International Health Regulations (IHR), which constitute one of the most radical and far-reaching changes to international law on public health since the beginning of international health cooperation in the mid-nineteenth century. This article comprehensively analyses the new IHR by examining the history of international law on infectious disease control, the IHR revision process, the substantive changes contained in the new IHR and concerns regarding the future of the new IHR. The article demonstrates why the new IHR constitute a seminal event in the relationship between international law and public health …

Mandatory Recall Authority: A Sensible And Minimalist Approach To Improving Food Safety, Michael T. Roberts

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Is Fifra Enough Regulation? Failure To Obtain A Npdes Permit For Pesticide Applications May Violate The Clean Water Act, Rebecca E. Leintz

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the summer of 1999, West Nile Virus, a mosquito-borne illness, appeared in the eastern United States and has since worked its way across the country. Thousands have been infected, and hundreds have died from the virus. Communities, struggling to protect their residents, have often been forced to employ widespread pesticide spraying to stop the virus' spread. Citizens and environmental groups, however, have expressed concern that pesticide spraying is damaging to the environment and contend that the law has been broken. They argue that when these pesticides are deposited onto water bodies, without first obtaining a permit, there is a …

Aids And Adolescents, Rhonda Gay Hartman

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Legal Frameworks For Chronic Disease Prevention, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Law is a tool that can be used to shape both private and government conduct so as to impact public health. There are at least seven different techniques of legal intervention, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. These techniques are: direct regulation through command and coercion; economic incentives to encourage private parties to behave in a particular way; indirect regulation through private enforcement such as tort law; altering the informational environment; directly providing services or infrastructure to the public; government acting as a "model citizen" with respect to its employees and facilities; and, inducing other levels of government to …

Vanishing Vaccinations: Why Are So Many Americans Opting Out Of Vaccinating Their Children?, Steve P. Calandrillo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Vaccinations against life-threatening diseases are one of the greatest public health achievements in history. Literally millions of premature deaths have been prevented, and countless more children have been saved from disfiguring illness. While vaccinations carry unavoidable risks, the medical, social and economic benefits they confer have led all fifty states to enact compulsory childhood vaccination laws to stop the spread of preventable diseases. Today, however, vaccines are becoming a victim of their success-many individuals have never witnessed the debilitating diseases that vaccines protect against, allowing complacency toward immunization requirements to build. Antivaccination sentiment is growing fast in the United States, …

Parks As Gyms? Recreational Paradigms And Public Health In The National Parks, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When scholars and policymakers think about the relationship between public health and environmental law and policy, they likely think first about controlling pollution and other toxic substances. As other articles have amply demonstrated, water pollution, air pollution, and other environmental toxins can have significant deleterious effects on the public's health. Scholars rightly pay serious attention to these relationships, and policymakers wisely devise methods and strategies to ameliorate the public health risks posed by these polluting substances.

Although pollution control might be the most obvious and important intersection between environmental policy and public health, legal and policy decisions regarding the management …

Licensing Health Care Professionals: Has The United States Outlived The Need For Medical Licensure?, Gregory Dolin

All Faculty Scholarship

With an expanding market for what is now known as "complimentary and alternative" medicine (CAM), states are increasingly facing the issue of who can and who should be allowed to practice medicine. Of necessity, this question also concerns whom patients may see to treat their ailments.

This paper will argue that the struggle to define who is and who is not licensed to practice medicine is rather fruitless and will always leave patients with less choice than they desire. Part II will review the history of licensure in the United States. Parts III and IV will focus on benefits and …

Smart Growth For Community Development, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

The built environment has a profound effect on public health. For instance, community transportation policy influences pollution levels, which in turn contribute to levels of illness and death. The panelists for this session elaborate on this concept with perspectives drawn from varied experiences.

Caught Between Paradise And Power: Public Health, Pathogenic Threats, And The Axis Of Illness, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Affixing Blame: Ideologies Of Hiv/Aids In Thailand, Tarik Abdel-Monem

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article focuses on ideologies of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Thailand, one of many nations where the HIV/AIDS pandemic has reached alarming levels. Not unlike other nations struggling with HIV/AIDS, an epidemic of stigma and blame has developed in Thailand with increasing rates of infection among the population. Understandings of whom to blame for the epidemic, and how to realize appropriate solutions, have likewise developed as the epidemic continues to persist and spread. This Article examines these ideologies and how they are mediated through the lens of popular culture in contemporary Thailand. It attempts to examine the reasoning of such …

Blinded By Bioterrorism: Public Health And Liberty In The 21st Century, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In Blindness, Nobel Prize laureate Jos6 Saramago chronicles the quarantining of the first victims of a plague of blindness.1 We meet many people who become blind in Saramago's novel, including an opthamologist, a one-eyed man with an eye patch, and a man born blind. Saramago reminds us that we are all blind in one way or another, and that there are many things about ourselves and our society that we can't or won't see. The quarantine itself turns out to be isolating, inhumane, and degrading; the interred blind being portrayed by themselves and others as pigs, dogs, and "lame crabs." …

The Built Environment And Its Relationship To The Public's Health: The Legal Framework, Wendy Collins Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Public health advocates can help shape the design of cities and suburbs in ways that improve public health, but to do so effectively they need to understand the legal framework. This article re- views the connection between public health and the built environment and then describes the legal pathways for improving the design of our built environment.

Puppy Love: Bioterrorism, Civil Rights, And Public Health, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Florida has been the state humorists most like to make fun of since the 2000 presidential election, especially when it comes to politics. And humorists are almost the only commentators who can be counted on to tell us the truth about the state of American politics today. When Californians decided to recall their Governor, for example, Conan O'Brien observed: "Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents, who now live in the second-flakiest state in the country."' And when more than 200 people filed to run for Governor, Jay …

The Invention Of Health Law, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

By default, the courts are inventing health law. The law governing the American health system arises from an unruly mix of statutes, regulations, and judge-crafted doctrines conceived, in the main, without medical care in mind. Courts are ill-equipped to put order to this chaos, and until recently they have been disinclined to try. But political gridlock and popular ire over managed care have pushed them into the breach, and the Supreme Court has become a proactive health policy player. How might judges make sense of health law's disparate doctrinal strands? Scholars from diverse ideological starting points have converged toward a …

Public Health And The Built Environment: Historical, Empirical, And Theoretical Foundations For An Expanded Role, Wendy Collins Perdue, Lawrence O. Gostin, Lesley A. Stone

Law Faculty Publications

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which "sprawl" impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report "a ludicrous sham" and argued that the CDC should stick to "fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones."

In this environment, it is understandable if the CDC looks to such …

Financing Public Health Through Nonprofit Conversion Foundations, Christopher W. Frost

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Protection and promotion of the public's health are typically thought of as governmental responsibilities. Certainly, the core functions of responding to contagious diseases through quarantine, vector control, mandatory reporting, mandatory immunizations, and other coercive measures require governmental power. Historically, public health has been defined by governmental response to immediate threats to the health of the population.

As our view of the public's health expands to take into account broader measures, however, so too can we expand our view of the kinds of institutions that serve to promote the public's health. Most commentators agree that public health is a wide ranging …

Recovering From Drugs And The Drug War: An Achievable Public Health Alternative, Eric Blumenson

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

For three decades our War on Drugs has characterized illicit drug use as a law enforcement problem, to be addressed primarily through interdiction and criminal punishment. This policy has multiplied the number of imprisoned Americans, but our drug problem remains as entrenched as ever, and both voters and policy experts appear ready to embrace an alternative public health approach. Such an approach recognizes that a substantial number of Americans will continue to use drugs for the foreseeable future, and seeks to minimize the risks these people face from their drug habits. This requires programs and funding for treatment, education, and …

Personal Privacy And Common Goods: A Framework For Balancing Under The National Health Information Privacy Rule, Lawrence O. Gostin, James G. Hodge Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, we discuss how these principles for balancing apply in a number of important contexts where individually identifiable health data are shared. In Part I, we analyze the modern view favoring autonomy and privacy. In the last several decades, individual autonomy has been used as a justification for preventing sharing of information irrespective of the good to be achieved. Although respect for privacy can sometimes be important for achieving public purposes (e.g., fostering the physician/patient relationship), it can also impair the achievement of goals that are necessary for any healthy and prosperous society. A framework for balancing that …

The Nationalization Of Health Information Privacy Protections, Lawrence O. Gostin, James G. Hodge Jr., Lauren Marks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Part II, this article examines the justifications for implementing comprehensive national health information privacy regulations, including the personal nature of health information and the increasing threats to personal privacy from the shift to an electronic health information infrastructure. In doing so, it looks at historical attempts by federal and state officials to regulate the use and disclosure of personal health information, and concludes that prior standards have been largely inadequate. In Part III, this article explains the new national health information privacy regulations: (1) what do they cover?; (2) to whom do they apply?; (3) how do they safeguard …