Introducing New Blogger Peng Zhao

Zhao_peopleThe Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome Visiting Scholar Peng Zhao to the Bill of Health as our newest contributor, who will blog primarily about China’s drug and food law and regulatory policy.

Peng Zhao earned his BA (2003), MA (2009), and PhD (2009) in law from the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL, Beijing). He serves as associate professor of law and vice director of the Center for Government Reform and Development at CUPL. Peng’s research and teaching interests include food law, administrative law, and risk regulation theory. He has authored more than a dozen articles on food law and risk regulation theory, and is now presiding over two research projects sponsored by the Chinese central government on these two fields. Peng is a director and member of the Chinese Association of Administrative Law, and deputy secretary general of a committee affiliated with this organization which focuses on legal issues on governmental regulation. Peng has also participated actively in professional service activities. He had served as member of an expert commission for the National Health and Family Planning Commission on amendments to Chinese Food Safety Law, and currently is serving as advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology on amendments to Chinese regulation of laboratory animal management. In addition, Peng was recently recognized by CUPL students as one of the Top Ten Popular Teachers at CUPL from 2013 to 2015.  Read More

Monday, 10/26, HLS Health Law Workshop with Adam Kolber

HLS Health Law Workshop: Adam Kolber

October 26, 2015, 5:00 PM
Lewis International Law Center, Room 214A
1557 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 02138

Download the paper: “Two Views of First Amendment Thought Privacy”

Adam Kolber is a Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. He writes and teaches in the areas of health law, bioethics, criminal law, and neurolaw and is affiliated with the Law School’s Center for Health, Science, and Public Policy and the Center for Law, Language & Cognition. In 2005, he created the Neuroethics & Law Blog and, in 2006, taught the first law school course devoted to law and neuroscience. He has also taught law and neuroscience topics to federal and state judges as part of a MacArthur Foundation grant. Professor Kolber has been a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values and at NYU Law School’s Center for Research in Crime and Justice. His work has been frequently discussed in the media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Kolber began his academic career on the faculty of the University of San Diego School of Law. Before that, he clerked for the Honorable Chester J. Straub of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practiced law with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. He graduated Order of the Coif from Stanford Law School, where he was an associate editor of the Stanford Law Review. Prior to law school, he was a business ethics consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Among his recent publications, Kolber has written “Unintentional Punishment,” 18 Legal Theory 1 (2012); “The Experiential Future of the Law,” 60 Emory Law Journal 585 (2011); “The Subjective Experience of Punishment,” 109 Columbia Law Review 182 (2009); “The Comparative Nature of Punishment,” 89 Boston University Law Review1565 (2009); and “A Limited Defense of Clinical Placebo Deception,” 26Yale Law & Policy Review 75 (2007).

UDI Adoption: A Necessary Step Towards Better Care for Patients with Implanted Devices

By Dalia Deak

In the United States, though many millions of individuals live with implanted devices, it may shock you to know that it is easier to recall tainted dog food than it is to recall a faulty pacemaker. This is due in large part to the lag of the medical device world behind most other industries in the implementation of a standardized system that can uniquely identify and track medical devices as they move through the supply chain to a patient. Such an identification system has existed for most products since stores implemented the UPC and Congress mandated that drugs be labeled with the National Drug Code, both of which were introduced in the early 1970s.

To remedy this lag, Congress, in FDAAA of 2007, tasked the FDA with the creation of a unique device identification (UDI) system. In 2013, FDA published a Final Rule regarding manufacturer labeling of UDIs, to be rolled out by class in the coming years. While the establishment of such a system would certainly constitute an important step forward, another number on a label will do little to enhance patient safety on its own. Rather, the value of UDIs is in the uptake of the identifier at each point in a medical device’s life—from manufacturer to distributor to provider to patient to payer (see this report I co-authored on this very issue). Read More

IU Fairbanks School of Public Health seeks Center for Health Policy Director

I’m pleased to share with my Bill of Health colleagues that my home department, the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, is seeking a Director for its Center for Health Policy.

The full announcement can be found here.

This is a great opportunity for a senior researcher interested in joining a rapidly growing and dynamic department sitting at the center of a health sciences campus that includes the following collaborators:

  • a leading health informatics and healthcare research organization (the Regenstrief Institute https://www.regenstrief.org/aboutus/);
  • one of the largest medical schools in the country (https://medicine.iu.edu/);
  • a nursing school led by a top patient-centered outcomes researcher (https://news.iupui.edu/releases/2015/04/newhouse-nursing-dean-appointment.shtml);
  • a well-established relationship with a top Health Law and Bioethics program;

as well as strong relationships with a large health care system, a progressive public hospital, and local, state, national, and international NGOs and agencies.

Introducing the Harvard Health Law Society

10689774_809751895714130_4010610321675415773_nThe Harvard Health Law Society (HHLS) is a student organization at Harvard Law School, dedicated to exploring issues at the intersection of health and law while connecting students and experts for active engagement. It is made up of students at Harvard Law, as well as other Harvard students, interested in health policy, health care law, biotechnology, bioethics, health and human rights, and a range of other health and law topics.

We are excited to announce that, as part of an ongoing collaboration with the Petrie-Flom Center, members of the Health Law Society will be contributing bloggers this year. Our first two bloggers will be:

Matt Ryan photo_HLS

Matthew Ryan

HLS Class of 2017

 

 

 

HHLS Blogger Goerge Maliha

George Maliha

HLS Class of 2018

 

 

 

Welcome to Bill of Health, HHLS!

Public Safety and Public Health

This morning I saw an announcement about a new initiative called “Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration” and thought it was an important thing to share on this blog. This alliance consists of 120 top current/former police commissioners and prosecutors, including both district attorneys and state attorneys general. These law enforcement leaders have come together to influence legislation and public opinion around mass incarceration. Their first project: supporting the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, a bipartisan bill currently moving through the Senate. This issue matters because there are currently over 2.2 million people in American prisons and jails.

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation on earth, and by a disturbing margin: we have just 5 percent of the world’s population, but 20 percent of the world’s prisoners. What’s more, our prison population has grown by over 500 percent since 1978. At any given moment, one in 35 Americans is in prison, on parole, or on probation.

Why is criminal justice a health policy issue? Well, there are many reasons, but let’s start with the fact that the largest mental health provider in the United States is the Cook County Jail. This does not reflect well on our criminal justice policy or our health policy.

Read More

EVENT (11/12-13): The New Health Care Industry – Integration, Consolidation, Competition in the Wake of the Affordable Care Act

SolomonConfLogoThe New Health Care Industry: Integration, Consolidation, Competition in the Wake of the Affordable Care Act

Thursday, November 12 Center Launch, Celebratory Reception with speaker Kathleen Sebelius — former Secretary, Health and Human Services 4:00–6:30pm
Friday, November 13 Inaugural Conference 8:30am–5:00pm
Attendance to both events it free, but registration is required.

This conference marks the launch of the new Solomon Center for Health Policy and Law at Yale Law School. The Solomon Center is the first of its kind to focus on the governance, business, and practice of health care in the United States. This conference will mark the first under the Center, which will focus on bringing together leading experts and practitioners from the public and private sectors to address cutting-edge questions of health law and policy. Read More

Seeking Applicants! Executive Director, Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School

Sterling_Law_Building,_YaleSolomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School: Executive Director

The Yale Law School is delighted to announce the launch of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, an exciting new Center at Yale Law School dedicated to training the next generation of health law leaders—academics, CEOS, lawyers, and government officials—and having an impact today on the most important health care issues.

The Solomon Center is seeking applications for the position of Executive Director. The Solomon Center coordinates a diverse program of activities that serve students and scholars at Yale and contribute both locally and internationally to the study of health law—with a particular focus on health governance, industry and the practice of medicine. Read More

Pre-Approval Access Symposium: Can Compassion, Business, and Medicine Coexist?

Dates: October 28 – 29, 2015
Location: The New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center, NYC
Presented by: NYU School of Medicine and the New York Academy of Sciences
Event URL: www.nyas.org/CompassionateUse

Explore challenges surrounding pre-approval access to investigational medicines through a series of debates featuring prominent representatives of governments, pharmaceutical companies, patient groups, NGOs, and foundations in this two-day colloquium.

Agenda topics include:

  • Perspectives from Patient Advocates on Compassionate Use and Expanded Access
  • The Case of Josh Hardy and Social Media’s Impact
  • Lessons Learned from the Ebola Virus Epidemic on Compassionate Use during a Crisis
  • Key Issues from Stakeholders’ Perspectives When Considering a Compassionate Use Request
  • Legislative or Regulatory Changes on Compassionate Use and Expanded Access

Read More