The Week in Health Law

Sarah de Guia of ChangeLab Solutions is joined by Sharon Terman from legal aid at work, and Danilo Trisi from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The participants have a broad-ranging discussion about the safety net, what the Biden administration has achieved so far, and what are some of the priorities that remain.

Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, Lori Tremmel Freeman is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and Jill Krueger, the director of the Network for Public Law’s Northern Region Office discuss the various attempts to restrict, reallocate, or otherwise diminish traditional public health powers and the implications. The panelists discuss recent state laws reducing public health emergency powers, ALEC, & where things stand now.

I am joined by Professor Anniek de Ruijter Professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Professor Andrew Noymer, University of California, Irvine, and Professor Nils Hoppe, the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences at Leibniz University Hannover. Our discussion begins with the lessons learned or not learned in various countries and regions and then explores issues such as vaccine intellectual property and vaccine passports. BTW, Anniek has an interesting new paper on EU health solidarity, Sharon Baute & Anniek de Ruijter (2021) EU health solidarity in times of crisis: explaining public preferences towards EU risk pooling for medicines, Journal of European Public Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2021.1936129

Jorge Contreras, Professor of Law, University of Utah, Brook Baker, Professor of Law, Northeastern University, and Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University discuss vaccine access, What are the technical obstacles to increasing vaccine access? How are Intellectual Property, primarily patent and trade secret, laws restricting access and keeping prices high?

Professor Scott Burris, Temple Law School, Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, and Professor Lance Gable, Wayne State College of Law discuss the “shadow docket,” the hundreds of cases (emergency orders and summary decisions) decided by the Supreme Court each year outside of its far smaller, normal or merits docket. Specifically, the discussion focuses on how public health decisions, such as (particularly free exercise) challenges to government mitigation mandates have been handled by the shadow docket, the possible deprecation of Jacobson deference and the implications for public health powers and law. As always for more information about public health law and the pandemic see Vol.2 of our COVID-19 Policy Playbook, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.

Scott Burris, Professor of Law, Temple Law School, Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, and Gene Matthews, Network for Public Health Law discuss the current proposals to increase the independence of public health agencies such as the CDC. Political manipulation and lack of leadership have seriously jeopardized public trust and even agency competence. Topics include prior examples of the politicization of public health, policymakers failing to understand social and behavioral science, and how an independent agency could be protected and funded. For more on this topic see The “Legal Epidemiology” of Pandemic Control and Designing an Independent Public Health Agency. See also Vol.2 of our COVID-19 Policy Playbook, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.

This is a special episode of TWIHL that introduces our new report, Volume II of our COViD-19 Policy Playbook titled, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future. Support for this report was generously provided by the de Beaumont Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. On this episode you will hear from the six members of the editorial committee in the following order-- Lance Gable from Wayne State University, Wendy Parmet from Northeastern University, myself, Scott Burris from Temple University, Donna Levin from The Network for Public Health Law, and finally Sarah de Guia from ChangeLab Solutions. Each of us will summarize one of the six Parts of the report and then return to highlight one or two of the recommendations the Editorial Committee thought particularly important.

Can private companies effectively serve public health functions? A panel discussion sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University featuring Lindsay F. Wiley, Professor of Law, Director of Health Law and Policy Program, American University Washington College of Law, Tamar Sharon, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Technology; Co-director of the Interdisciplinary Hub for Security, Privacy and Data Governance, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nicolas Terry, Hall Render Professor of Law, Executive Director of William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Craig Konnoth, Associate Professor of Law, Director, Health Law Certificate; and Faculty Director, Health Data & Technology Initiative, Silicon Flatirons Center, University of Colorado School of Law, and our moderator Mason Marks, Assistant Professor of Law, Gonzaga University; Fellow in Ethics of Technological and Biomedical Innovation, Edmond J. Safra and Petrie-Flom Centers, Harvard University This privatization of public health, which has taken shape over the past few years and accelerated rapidly during the pandemic, raises challenging ethical and legal questions. What is lost when public health becomes privatized? Are values like scientific rigor, transparency, equity, and accountability upheld? Are the promised efficiencies of the free market realized? This panel discussion addressed these questions and more.

A Pandemic Meets a Housing Crisis. Sarah de Guia and Gregory Miao of ChangeLab Solutions, along with Courtney Lauren Anderson of Georgia State University, discuss how the pre-existing housing crisis has been exacerbated by its compounding eviction and public health crises--and what work can be done to address it.

Improving Data Collection and Management. Nicolas Terry of Indiana University, Wendy Parmet of Northeastern University, and Jessica L. Roberts of the University of Houston discuss the unique challenges created by the lack of public health data available to drive targeted disease mitigation strategies. They will explore how the nation could advance data gathering and management to be better prepared for the next outbreak. In particular, the discussion focuses on collection of important sociodemographic data and questions of privacy.