Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Silent Suffering: Demanding Individual Accountability For Sexual Assault Against Disabled Children In School Environments, Stephanie Flores

Journal of Law and Policy

Disabled children are among the most vulnerable in society, particularly in school environments where they depend on the actions and care of others for their safety. These children face significantly higher risks of sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers, and school officials' negligence can exacerbate this danger. Despite the prevalence of such cases, the Fifth Circuit's refusal to recognize school officials’ liability under the state-created danger doctrine, as seen in Fisher v. Moore, deprives disabled children of adequate legal recourse under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The decision holds that school officials cannot be held personally liable for the peer-inflicted sexual …

Disability Discrimination By Clinical Algorithm, Elizabeth Pendo, Jennifer D. Oliva

Articles

In response to America’s escalating drug poisoning crisis, the federal government has funded, incentivized, and mandated that states adopt and implement prescription drug monitoring programs (“PDMPs”) to electronically surveil controlled substances and other “drugs of concern.” State PDMPs utilize proprietary, predictive software platforms that deploy algorithms to determine whether a patient is at risk for drug misuse, drug diversion, doctor shopping, or substance use disorder. PDMPs have never been validated by a federal agency or peer review, yet states have mandated their use throughout the health care delivery system.

Research demonstrates that clinical overreliance on the risk scores generated by …

Water Fluoridation: The Evidence Behind The Risk Of Fluoride Use, Margherita Fontana D.D.S., Ph.D., Carlos González-Cabezas D.D.S., M.S.D., Ph.D., Livia Tenuta D.D.S., M.Sc., Ph.D.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The debate surrounding fluoride use for caries control has intensified due to recent events, including a National Toxicology Program (NTP) report and a court ruling mandating EPA action on fluoride levels in tap water.

Despite concerns about fluoride's potential neurodevelopmental impact at high concentrations, current evidence shows no adverse effects at the recommended levels of 0.7 ppm in U.S. community water fluoridation programs. While studies in regions with endemic fluorosis suggest an association between high fluoride exposure and lower IQ, methodological limitations undermine causal conclusions.

Global and U.S. health authorities, including the WHO and ADA, reaffirm the safety and efficacy …

What You Must Know: Retention And Destruction Of Dental Records And Your Most-Asked Questions About Dental Records, Daniel Schulte Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

An overview of the basic information about dental records, including retention and destruction, that you and your staff should be aware of, provided by MDA Legal Counsel Dan Schulte, J.D. Plus, for your reference, answers to the questions Michigan dental offices are asking about dental record retention, access, release, and destruction.

Dental records are vital for patient care, legal compliance, and professional practice management. Michigan law mandates retaining dental records for a minimum of 10 years, ensuring their confidentiality, accessibility, and integrity. Destruction of records less than 10 years old requires patient notification and authorization, while those over 10 years …

Advocacy Spotlight: Understanding The Mda's Role With Dental Insurance Reimbursement Rates, Daniel Miller D.D.S.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The Michigan Dental Association (MDA) is dedicated to advocating for members and advancing the dental profession. While federal laws prohibit the MDA from negotiating reimbursement rates with dental insurers, it provides significant support through education, advocacy, and resources.

Key initiatives include enhancing transparency in network leasing, endorsing PPO Negotiation Solutions to help practices optimize contracts, and offering educational programs on billing and coding. The MDA also facilitates peer networking and equips dentists with tools to navigate insurance challenges effectively.

Looking ahead, the MDA remains committed to empowering members through advocacy, guiding future dentists on contract literacy, and fostering a resilient …

J Mich Dent Assoc December 2024

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Each month, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association provides news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. It stands as the primary publication reaching Michigan dentists.

The December issue includes a timely cover feature on evidence supporting community water fluoridation, a clinical feature answering questions on patient dental records, a guest editorial on leadership by former MDA Journal Editor Dr. Bill Chase, and a Back Page article on how a personal touch makes a difference. We also provide our annual 2024 Author/Title Index and regular departments: The New Professional, …

Equitable Thriving: A Lifecourse Approach To Maternal And Child Health Justice, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Black women are at least three times more likely to die due to a pregnancy-related cause than White women. Grave racial disparities also abound in severe maternal morbidity, or significant unexpected health consequences of labor and delivery. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, has only further restricted reproductive healthcare options and raised concerns that these disparities will grow even starker. Black, Indigenous, and Latine infants and children also experience unjust—and avoidable—health inequities. As a general matter, people of color are sicker across their lifespans and die younger in …

Just Fix The Damn Payment System!, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This piece takes as a given that we are stuck with our fragmented, inefficient, multi-payor health care system for at least the short run. It then analyzes the deficiencies of three payment mechanisms whereby regulators (including Congress) have invited private sector providers to help ameliorate perceived problems. The first concerns an inadequate supply of nursing home beds in the early ‘70s, the next focuses on Medicare Advantage as a supposedly superior cost containment alternative to traditional Medicare, and the final one involves the ‘devil’s bargain’ struck with the pharmaceutical industry to get prescription drug coverage added to Medicare. All three …

Transplantation And Immortality: A Selective History Of Boston University’S Center For Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The celebration of the anniversary of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights (the “Center”) provides an opportunity to reflect on what defines the field of health law, as well as its conjoined twins of bioethics and human rights. The related fields are vast, and the subjects they encompass are ever-expanding. It is probably impossible to lay out a summary that does justice to their expansive, interdisciplinary scope. Instead, my discussion of the Center examines a subject that barely existed when the Center was formed in 19581 and that continues to make headlines more than sixty–six years later …

Health Law And Democracy, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Current political divisions are destabilizing existing laws affecting the health field. Major changes in the field of health law have one thing in common: changes in who holds political power ‒ Congress and state legislatures, governors, presidents, judges, and agency officials. The laws that structure financial, economic, educational, and health care systems, environmental conditions, and civil society are primarily the product of elections that populate our political institutions. These structural determinants of health in turn create laws that influence how ‒ and how well ‒ we live and whether our society functions fairly under the rule of law. Thus, who …

A One-Egg Wonder: Working To Cure Judicial Gender Bias And Increase Access To Pre-Embryos For Infertile Parties, Nicole Marks Kaufman

Cardozo Law Review

The first live birth of a child conceived from in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) happened in 1978. Today, over eight million children have been born through IVF procedures. The first dispute over the resulting pre-embryos was in 1990 when the Tennessee Supreme Court outlined a balancing approach with a presumption favoring non-use of the pre-embryos for courts to follow when resolving these matters. Numerous states have taken differing approaches—some have taken a contractual approach, others an approach requiring contemporaneous mutual consent before there can be a departure from the status quo, and very few state legislatures have directly addressed how to …

Where There's A Will, There's A Way: Abortion Litigation In The States, Catherine Dowd

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Dismantling The Dogma Of Dot: A Human Rights-Based Review Of Directly Observed Therapy For Tuberculosis, Brian Citro, Dr. Jennifer Furin, Rhea Lobo, Ingrid Schoeman, Timur Abdullaev, James Malar

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

The global tuberculosis (TB) response is at a crossroads. In recent years, new ideas, technologies, and political commitments have reinvigorated the fight against this age-old disease that kills more people each year than HIV and malaria combined. But with key indicators just beginning to recover after moving in the wrong direction during the COVID-19 pandemic, hard-earned gains are at stake. In this rejuvenated yet challenging context, we critically review an idea and practice at the heart of the TB response—directly observed therapy or DOT. First, we explore DOT’s controversial method and history as a component of the World Health Organization’s …

Ethical Considerations In Qualitative Research After Dobbs, Sabrina Singh

Pace Law Review

The verdict in the Dobbs case will undoubtedly have an impact on the United States research enterprise for years to come. Since the landmark decision was handed down by the high court, researchers have warned of the impacts that the decision will have on clinical research. However, there is less discussion about how qualitative researchers will be impacted by this decision. Oftentimes, qualitative researchers are asking their participants to be vulnerable and to let researchers be privy to intimate and/or confidential details about their lives. In exchange for such access, researchers need to ensure the protection of their participants and …

Introduction—Bioethics After Dobbs, James Toomey

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Embryos Or Fetuses Brain Dead? Implications For The Abortion Debate, Greer Donley

Pace Law Review

Most state abortion definitions exclude the removal of a dead fetus, attempting to distinguish miscarriage and abortion care. But what does “dead” mean at the earliest stages of potential life? There is a consensus at the end of life that death not only encompasses the cessation of cardiac activity, but also brain death. This symposium essay considers whether life can only begin with the emergence of brain life and if so, how that might impact the abortion debate. The most rudimentary brain waves cannot be detected in an embryo before roughly the eighth week of pregnancy; the capacity for feeling …

Personhood, Politics, Assisted Reproduction, And The Law Post-Dobbs, Myrisha S. Lewis

Pace Law Review

With the end of the federal constitutional right to abortion, state legislatures and state courts have become far more important in the sphere of reproductive rights. Before Dobbs, anti-abortion advocates had significant (albeit increasingly porous) ceilings on what they could prohibit in relation to reproductive health care. A significant check on those actions is now gone.

In the wake of Dobbs, societal debates about personhood have increased and expanded in terms of their practical implications. Before Dobbs, anti-abortion advocates admitted that Roe and subsequent cases limited the scope of their arguments, especially in relation to the legality …

Patient-Practitioner Relationship In The Post-Dobbs American Landscape, Lynette B. Martins, Scott J. Schweikart

Pace Law Review

The patient-practitioner relationship is among the most sacred and fundamental in health care, particularly in the realm of reproductive care. Laws regulating what practitioners can and cannot discuss in the exam room with patients have made a resurgence in the post-Dobbs era. In the reproductive care context, these restrictive laws impact patients’ access to critical medical services but also the fundamental underpinnings of the patient-practitioner relationship. In a post-Dobbs era, laws restricting abortion are increasingly dangerous to the health of those seeking these services. With no federal protection for access to abortion services and abortion services hinging on …

We Have Lost Our Minds, Teneille Ruth Brown

Pace Law Review

This Article examines the paradoxical treatment of autonomy in American healthcare law. While autonomy has become the dominant principle in medical ethics and neoliberal market philosophies, pregnant people have been systematically denied this same autonomy through increasingly restrictive abortion statutes. Using the rhetoric of “informed consent,” abortion-restrictive statutes ironically pervert the animating principles behind the doctrine—rendering it almost meaning- less. I argue that this contradiction stems from the dehumanization of pregnant people who seek abortions, particularly through the denial of their capacity to have individual, complex mental states and feelings. Drawing on moral psychology, the Article demonstrates how pregnant people …

Making A Case For Legal Health Advocacy: A Socio-Legal Exploration Of The Law As A Tool For Physician Health Advocacy, Jeanne L. Webber

Master of Studies in Law Research Papers Repository

This paper grapples with the question of whether physicians have a unique moral, ethical or professional responsibility to engage in health advocacy. If so, what are the sources of that obligation, and how is advocacy understood in this context? These questions are addressed through a critical examination of the bio-medical, ethical, and legal literature and medical professional practice standards.

This research explores emergent themes in the literature including how advocacy is conceptualized, the challenges inherent in defining the term, and the consequent difficulty teaching health advocacy in medical education. This paper also examines how the value of advocacy is represented …