Health Law and Policy Commons^™

The National School Lunch Program: Lunch Is For Kids Not Political Propaganda, Caroline Scanlon Beleson

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Operationalizing The Health Care Benefit Corporation, Terry L. Corbett

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

The Means And Ends Of Wellness Programs, Laura D. Hermer

Faculty Scholarship

How far should we go in assigning individuals causal responsibility for their own health status and what should the implications of any such assignment be?

Few would deny that most adults have a major role in achieving and maintaining their own health. However, it is not at all clear where one should draw the line between what is freely chosen and what is determined by forces outside a person’s control. Medical care plays only a small role in most people’s overall health, and often social, environmental, and personal factors are far more important. Incentivizing an individual to take better care …

Period Poverty In A Pandemic: Harnessing Law To Achieve Menstrual Equity, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Period poverty is not new, but it has become more visible during the COVID-19 crisis. Worldwide, menstruation has long caused marginalization and vulnerability for many. The pandemic has only amplified these conditions. This Article makes three claims. The first is descriptive, identifying four interrelated aspects of global period poverty that have gained new salience during the coronavirus pandemic: lack of access to affordable menstrual products; lack of access to other needed supplies and services for health and sanitation; lack of menstruation-related information and support from schools and health professionals; and menstrual stigma and shame. Using examples from multiple countries, the …

"As Long As I'M Me": From Personhood To Personal Identity In Dementia And Decision-Making, James Toomey

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As people, especially older people, begin to develop dementia, we confront ethical questions about when and how to intervene in their increasingly compromised decision-making. The prevailing approach in philosophically-inclined bioethics to tackling this challenge has been to develop theories of “decision-making capacity” based on the same characteristics that entitle the decisions of moral persons to respect in general. This Article argues that this way of thinking about the problem has missed the point. Because the disposition of property is an identity-dependent right, what matters in dementia and decision-making is an individual’s personal identity with their prior self, not their moral …

The Need For A Strong And Stable Federal Public Health Agency Independent From Politicians, Jacqueline Salwa, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the precariousness of federal public health institutions in the United States, and how disastrously things can go when those institutions are undermined by political forces. Such institutions can be disbanded, underfunded, populated with incompetent political hacks, manipulated, or sidelined. As a field, public health in particular needs some political space, given that it requires deep scientific expertise and needs to communicate to the public clearly, reliably, and with authority to engender trust. Key public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in particular, should be buttressed against future political encroachment, …

Covid-19 And Digital Contact Tracing: Regulating The Future Of Public Health Surveillance, Divya Ramjee, Pollyanna Sanderson, Imran Malek

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Digital surveillance tools are at the forefront of potential public health response strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States is in desperate need of a national-level contact tracing and exposure notification strategy to supplement traditional public health response efforts. This article addresses data privacy and security concerns, as well as epidemiological considerations, when developing digital contact tracing and exposure notification tools. It is both feasible and prudent that the United States establish a federal network for public health surveillance aided by digital tools, especially considering that waves of COVID-19 are expected to continue well into 2021 and while the …

Response To: A Telehealth Explosion: Using Lessons From The Pandemic To Shape The Future Of Telehealth Regulation, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

In A Telehealth Explosion: Using Lessons from the Pandemic to Shape the Future of Telehealth Regulation, published in the Texas A&M Law Review, Professor Deborah Farringer tackles the critical issue of the efficacy and implementation of telehealth, using our experience(s) of telehealth during the COVID–19 pandemic as the guide. This is important, as Professor Farringer acknowledges, because while telehealth advocates pre-date the pandemic, barriers prevented the implementation of telehealth in a widespread manner. These barriers included a concern about fraud and a question as to whether telehealth visits could provide effective outcomes compared to in-person visits. Professor Farringer …

“Trapped” In A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Restrictions During The Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror Earlier Attacks On The Abortion Right And How Judicial Review Failed To Protect It, Nancy L. Dordal

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

American Edibles: How Cannabis Regulatory Policy Rehashes Prohibitionist Fears And What To Do About It, Connor Burns, Jay Wexler

Seattle University Law Review

Why can’t we buy a cannabis muffin with our morning coffee? For much of the past century, the answer was simple: cannabis was illegal. Now, however, with more and more states legalizing cannabis for adult use, the answer is far less clear. Even in those states that have legalized cannabis, the simple action of buying and eating edibles at the same location has somehow remained a pipe dream despite consumer demand. Digging a little deeper, we can see how contemporary alarmism—by rehashing the same prohibitionist rhetoric demonizing cannabis for over eighty years—has once again arisen with a new target: cannabis-infused …

Health Care Sanctuaries, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

It is increasingly common for noncitizens living in the United States to avoid seeing a doctor or enrolling in publicly funded health programs because they fear surveillance by immigration authorities. This is the consequence of a decades-long shift in the locus of immigration enforcement activities from the border to the interior, as well as a recent period of heightened immigration enforcement. These fears persist because the law incompletely constrains immigration surveillance in health care.

This Article argues that immigration surveillance in health care is a poor choice of resource allocation for immigration enforcement because it has severe consequences for health …

Is Obesity A Manifestation Of Systemic Racism? A Ten‐Point Strategy For Study And Intervention, Daniel G. Aaron, Fatima Cody Stanford

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In the recent past, there has been rising attention to systemic racism. The ensuing discussions have largely focused on COVID-19 and policing. Despite long-standing disparities in obesity across racial and ethnic groups and obesity’s important role in COVID-19 disparities, there has been minimal attention to whether obesity itself could be a manifestation of systemic racism. Nor has there been serious policy attention dedicated to alleviating obesity and its disproportionate burden on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). We discuss whether obesity’s disproportionate harms to BIPOC may be attributed to systemic racism, and we provide a ten-point strategy for studying …

Ten Years Post-Gao Assessment, Fda Remains Uninformed Of Potentially Harmful Gras Substances In Foods, Cameron Faustman, Daniel G. Aaron, Nicole Negowetti, Emily Broad Leib

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

It has been approximately 10years since the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report to Congress entitled, FDA Should Strengthen Its Oversight of Food Ingredients Determined to be Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), which strongly criticized FDA noting that its “oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations.” Congress requested GAO to undertake this audit as a result of concerns that GRAS substances added to foods did not require FDA approval. Since 2010, FDA has addressed only a few of the criticisms regarding its process for establishing a food substance as GRAS. However, several of …

Volume 31 (2021), Health Matrix: Journal Of Law-Medicine

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

Perfluoroalkyl And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances: Using Law And Policy To Address These Environmental Health Hazards In The United States, Jennifer Black, Amanda Moreland, Montrece Mcneill Ransom, Emely Sanchez

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

A Key To Clarity: How Clearinghouses May Improve Health Care, Anna F. Borromeo

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

Environmental Health, Public Health, Or Individual Health? The Complications Of Using Eco-Labels For Food Governance, Steph Tai

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

Negative Freedom In Crisis Times, Leslie Francis

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary U.S. jurisprudence thus treats public health orders requiring masks or limiting attendance at religious services as conflicts between individual freedoms and the public safety. Courts have left unquestioned the scope of individual liberties. Choices about whether to cover one’s face or attend religious services are not, however, fully analogous to protections from physical injury by others. Instead, they are choices that may result in risks to others. It is thus at least open to question whether they are within the scope of protected individual liberties in the first place. The scope of personal liberty—whether liberty is distinct from license—is …

A Pound Of Flesh: How Medical Copayments In Prison Cost Inmates Their Health And Set Them Up For Reoffense, Rachel Wiggins

University of Colorado Law Review

The attitude of acquiescence in legislatures and courts has permitted the American prison system to develop a practice of exploiting the health of its incarcerated population as an additional and excessive form of punishment. This article focuses on a practice widely used in prisons-the imposition of medical copayments- which contributes to the current culture of endangering the physical and mental health of incarcerated persons, all in the name of cost cutting and prisoner control. The problem of medical copayments could be solved by both the courts, which could recognize that the practice serves no legitimate penological interest, and the states …

Child-Proofing Global Public Health In Anticipation Of Emergency, Frederick M. Abbott

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.