Health Law and Policy Commons^™

J Am Coll Dent 2026 92 2b

Journal of the American College of Dentists

This special issue of the Journal of the American College of Dentists responds to a growing but long-underrecognized demand for humanities and ethics in dental education, practice, and scholarship. It emerges from the work of the National Collaborative on Humanities and Ethics in Dentistry (NCHED), a multi-institutional partnership formed in 2023 to address the persistent exclusion of dentistry from broader health humanities conversations. Through national webinars and scholarly collaboration, NCHED has demonstrated substantial interest in ethical reflection, historical analysis, narrative inquiry, and the arts as essential to understanding oral health and dental care.

The unexpectedly strong response to the call …

The New Transgender Tipping Point: Trumpism, Medical Necessity & Gender-Affirming Care, Molly J. Nunn

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Following the rise and eventual triumph of Trumpism 2024, President Donald J. Trump and his administration have sought to discredit the internationally recognized standards of effective health care practice for gender-affirming care. Now, ten years after Time Magazine published “The Transgender Tipping Point,” the political discourse of transgender identity is tipping again. Under the second Trump Administration, transgender identity sits at the edge of an abyss. Trumpism seeks to eradicate or significantly limit access to gender-affirming care through executive actions and the judiciary, despite the plethora of medical associations stating that that care is medically necessary. Public policies that widely …

Healthcare Discrimination Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Mélisande Charbonneau-Gravel, Sébastien Jodoin, Siobhan O’Connell

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper explores the role that the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms could and should play in addressing and redressing discrimination in the context of healthcare in Canada. Drawing on landmark as well as recent jurisprudence, we analyze how sections 7 and 15 of the Charter apply to three types of healthcare discrimination: (1) lack of access to healthcare and health services; (2) lower quality of services, and attitudes and biases faced in diagnosis and treatment; and (3) physical, verbal, psychological, and sexual abuse experienced by patients. Our analysis highlights the ongoing, problematic nature of the prevailing interpretations of …

The Dead Hand And Frozen Lives: Embryonic Personhood And The Disruption Of Property Interests, Emma Miloglav

Fordham Law Review

Advances in assisted reproductive technology and the expansion of fetal personhood laws are colliding with a body of property doctrine built on assumptions about reproduction that no longer hold. In LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., the Supreme Court of Alabama held that extrauterine embryos—fertilized and frozen in a laboratory—are “children” under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. LePage represents a dramatic extension of fetal personhood.

This shift carries profound consequences for trusts and estates. If frozen embryos are treated as legal persons, they may qualify as heirs under intestacy statutes and as beneficiaries of wills, …

Striving To Thrive: Balancing Digital Health Innovation And Patient Protection Under Thailand’S Legal Framework, Thidarat Liamsomboon

Theses and Dissertations

The digitalization of health care has fundamentally transformed how health care services are accessed, delivered, and experienced worldwide. Telemedicine, artificial intelligence–assisted diagnostics, electronic health records, wearables, and mobile health applications are no longer novelties, but have become a substantial part of a modern clinical practice. Although these technologies offer great prospects for making health care more accessible, reducing administrative burden, and improving the quality of care, they also pose significant legal and regulatory challenges. The rate of technological development has far outpaced Thailand’s existing legal frameworks for regulating medical practice, professional accountability, and patient protection. This regulatory “lag” has generated …

The Doctor Won't See You Now: Legal Proscriptions For Medical Tourism Control And Regulation, Shenley W. Wish

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The Medical Tourism industry has experienced remarkable growth in the past decade and is tracking to exceed that growth dramatically in the coming decade. With this rapid expansion, however, comes growing pains—predominantly lackluster patient safety. This Note examines the opportunities and challenges that would arise from regulating Medical Tourism through an international treaty, recognizing that an international treaty approach provides the most comprehensive and practically feasible solution for addressing complex cross-border constraints to create a safer global medical industry. (from the author)

Fear, Delay, And Preventable Death: Rethinking Wyoming's Legislative Framework To Reduce Barriers In Overdose Emergency Reporting, Shoshana Sangros

Wyoming Law Review

This Comment asks whether Wyoming’s current immunity framework for reporting overdoses truly reduces delays in emergency treatment when distance, weather, and limited emergency medical service (EMS) capacity already regularly extend response times. It proposes that by amending two Wyoming statutes and funding statewide education, the goal of reducing barriers to calling 9-1-1 to report overdoses can be better achieved, and residents better protected. To support these proposed changes, Part II provides a concise account of relevant Wyoming statutory protections. Part III proposes specific amendments that would address the on-the-ground challenges of the Wyoming emergency response system. These adjustments will utilize …

Health Care Fraud And The End Of Chevron, Joan H. Krause

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

What do the Environmental Protection Agency’s “plantwide” definition of a “stationary” pollution source,” a National Marine Fisheries Service determination of who pays for fishing boat observers, and a Department of Health and Human Services rule governing the marketing of prescription drugs have in common? In short, a government agency’s interpretation of a federal statute. All three cases go to the heart of the administrative state: the ability of an agency, staffed by experts in the field, to interpret static statutory language to offer practical guidance to an ever-evolving industry.

The same is true of health care fraud, although it is …

Contrasting Visions Of Age: Manifestations Of Ageism In Law, Art, And Health Care, Janet L. Dolgin

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Ageism has befuddled the law’s attempts at remediation. Each “ism” (e.g., sexism, racism) differs from the others. Ageism, however, differs fundamentally from other “isms.” That difference explains the law’s failure to limit it. This article describes the difference, and it explains why that difference has rendered ageism resistant to legal remedies. Legal scholars and gerontologists have asked why the law’s efforts to limit the bias, stigma and discrimination that stem from ageism have largely failed. A remarkable framework for responding to that query derive from literary and artistic depictions of old people over time.

This article has identified shifting visions …

Predictive Health Discrimination: Cabining Ai Risk Assessment To Protect Worker Data, Elizabeth A. Brown

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Predictive health data monitoring is rapidly expanding in workplaces, outpacing legal protections and exposing workers to new risks. Employers may now use analytics powered by artificial intelligence (“AI”) to identify which workers are most likely to develop future disabilities, raising the threat that these workers will face limited opportunities and discrimination before such action is clearly illegal.

Employers are accelerating predictive biometric surveillance, fueled by financial incentives like reduced health insurance costs and higher productivity, accommodations for older workers, and the ubiquity of predictive analytics in general. Current federal and state laws offer scant protection against discrimination based on predicted …

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 …

Medicaid's Broken Promise To Children, Jerron R. Wheeler

Faculty Articles

In the United States, poor children's access to necessary healthcare is determined more by geography than medical need. This variation is not the result of thoughtful local tailoring but of excessive state autonomy and passive federal oversight. The result is a fragmented and unequal system that obscures accountability and fails the Nation's most vulnerable children.

Building on scholarship showing how decentralized implementation of federal social programs can erode America's social safety net, this Article examines how one of Congress's most ambitious entitlements for children-Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit has been quietly undermined. In light of …

Chat M.D., Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Large language models (LLMs) such as Claude and ChatGPT are the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems ever created, and they are being used to diagnose and treat patients. But LLMs have been shown to be unreliable, unpredictable, and unsafe on occasion. New AI guidelines recommend hundreds of standards, such as ‘transparency’, ‘trustworthiness’, and ‘safety’. But there is deep uncertainty whether these are sufficient. The literature focuses mostly on which standards best suit AI models, not on how to transmute standards into law. This article does that by considering AI guidelines as a starting point, then evaluating whether existing frameworks …

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 …

From Chevron To Chaos: How Loper Is Redefining The Future Of Health Privacy, Skylar Johnson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.