TOMORROW (3/23)! The Affordable Care Act: Past, Present and Future – A lecture by William B. Schultz, General Counsel of HHS, 2011-2016

17-03-23-aca-past-present-future-visixThe Affordable Care Act: Past, Present and Future – A lecture by William B. Schultz, General Counsel of HHS, 2011-2016

March 23, 2017 4:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Enacting universal healthcare was a 65 year project, which cost two Presidents control of Congress and jeopardized their chance for reelection. From the time the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010 to the end of President Obama’s second term, its repeal was the number one priority of the Republicans in Washington, and it was deeply unpopular across the nation. Now that the Republicans have control of all branches of government, the repeal agenda is complicated by the new support for the law by voters and some Republican governors. This lecture will discuss the complicated politics surrounding the Affordable Care Act and the policy options for the future.

Speakers

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REGISTER NOW (4/5)! Crowdfunding Medical Care: Identifying Ethical Implications

April 5, 2017 12:30 PM 
Tosteson Medical Education Center, Room 227
Harvard Medical School, 260 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA

Register for this event

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required. Please present a Harvard or other photo ID in order to enter the HMS campus. Register here.

Crowdfunding for medical care—seeking financial contributions from a large number of donors, often via social networks, to pay medical expenses—is growing in popularity in both the US and Canada. While the practice can have tangible benefits for some patients, it also raises challenging ethical and equity questions at the social level and for individual donors and campaigners. In this lecture, Professor Valorie Crooks will examine some of these questions, identify important directions for ethics-focused research, and discuss what we know about the medical expenses people are seeking to have covered.

Valorie Crooks, PhD, is a Full Professor and health geographer at Simon Fraser University (Canada). She holds the Canada Research Chair in Health Service Geographies and a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. She has authored more than 150 articles, chapters, and commentaries and leads a well funded research program that examines health care mobility and access.

Responding: I. Glenn Cohen, JDProfessor of Law, Harvard Law School, and Faculty Director, the Petrie-Flom Center.

This event is free and open to the public and lunch will be provided, but seating is limited and registration is required. A Harvard or other photo ID to enter the HMS campus. Please register here.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and theCenter for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

Nick Bagley on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale

Subscribe to TWIHL here!

twihl 5x5Joined by Michigan University School of Law Professor Nicholas Bagley, an expert on health law and federalism, we discussed “Federalism and the End of Obamacare,” his recent and extremely thoughtful Yale Law Journal essay. We also talked about the risk corridor payments litigation and wondered whether the insurers will ever get paid. And the ever-popular topic of the CBO came up, as Nick dashed Secretary Price’s hopes of regulating his way to a better score. Be sure to check out Nick’s work at The Incidental Economistand SSRN.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in Health Law & Policy. Subscribe at iTunes, listen at Stitcher Radio, Tunein and Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app. Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find us on twitter @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale @WeekInHealthLaw

Housing Equity Week in Review

Here’s the latest news in housing equity and law, from March 13-20, 2017:

  • Inspired by Matthew Desmond’s award winning book, “Evicted,” the Reinvestment Fund published research mapping eviction rates in Philadelphia. Now, the pressure on the city to act on eviction is piling up. Deborah Ross, the chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and Catherine Carr and Joseph A. Sullivan, co-chairs of the Association’s Civil Gideon and Access to Justice Task Force, wrote a letter calling on the city to fund legal representation for low income Philadelphians facing eviction. The Philadelphia City Council hosted a hearing Monday, March 20, about eviction following a resolution proposed by Council Member Helen Gym. Will Philly become the next city with free legal representation in housing court?
  • Dr. Megan Sandel has been on the front of advocating for housing as a public health solution for children’s illnesses. In an opinion piece this week in Stat News, Dr. Sandel criticizes the proposed cuts to HUD’s budget and asks Ben Carson to “Think of a stable home as a vaccine, something that can keep people healthy now and in the future.”
  • A new report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition came out about the benefits of affordable housing. Next City reviews the report in the context of the HUD budget cuts, saying that affordable housing have ripple effects.
  • Senator Cantwell (D-WA) and Senator Hatch (R-UT) re-introduce a bipartisan bill to increase the housing credit authority by 50 percent in Low Income Housing Tax Credit development, via RentalHousingAction.org

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Discrimination Based on Predictive Health Data

This post is part of our Blog Symposium “Applying the Americans with Disabilities Act and Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act to the NFL Workplace.” Background on the symposium and links to other blog posts are here

By Sharona Hoffman

The excellent article, “Evaluating NFL Player Health and Performance:  Legal and Ethical Issues,” argues that some of the existing assessments of NFL players appear to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The authors call for revisions to the ADA to clarify the statute’s applicability to professional football and the scope of permitted medical examinations under the ADA.

I would like to take the argument a step further and urge that the ADA be extended to cover employer conduct that is now outside the statutory scope but is highly relevant to athletes’ employment prospects.  Specifically, the ADA should cover discrimination based on predictions of future physical and mental impairments. Read More

New Blog Symposium! Applying the Americans with Disabilities Act and Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act to the NFL Workplace

By Christopher R. Deubert

In recent years, there has been a growing amount of attention to different types of technologies (wearable and otherwise) that can measure various health- and performance-related metrics for athletes (see here, here, here, here, and here).  While no categorization is perfect, these technologies generally fall into eight categories: (1) player tracking, (2) heart rate, (3) sleep, (4) readiness, (5) body temperature, (6) force, (7) hydration, and (8) head impact sensors. Teams may use these technologies for evaluating and improving player performance, as well as for preventing or minimizing injury.

These new technologies are exciting, but they also raise concerns about how the data they generate might be used unfavorably towards players. For example, a team might discover that a player is no longer creating the same amount of force as he used to, which could threaten the player’s status with the team.

It was these types of concerns that led our team – Jessica L. Roberts, I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and me – to conduct an analysis of potential legal concerns related to these technologies, as well as other health and performance evaluations of NFL players, in our recent article, Evaluating NFL Player Health and Performance: Legal and Ethical Issues (165 U. Penn. L. Rev. 227, Jan. 2017).*  Specifically, we focused on the application of two federal employment antidiscrimination statutes: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) to the NFL workplace. Read More

What Does It Mean to Be a Just Institution?

[Cross-posted from the Public Health Post Blog, where it originally appeared on March 17, 2017.] 

By Lauren Taylor  

The Trump administration is prompting many of us in health services to ask new questions about if, and how, to draw lines between our personal and professional endeavors. Do we sign that petition with our institutional affiliation? Do we retweet that tweet? Do we share news of that protest on the established mailing list? As someone who studies organizational ethics, these individual-level questions soon give way to a larger set of questions about the roles and responsibilities of the institutions within which we spend so much of our professional lives. In a moment in which the role of institutions appears critically important, what does it mean to be a just institution?

Recently, local leaders have shone light on this question. Over a weekend of protests in January, Harvard Business School faculty member Ariel Dora Stern (an expert in management of innovation in health care) imagined aloud about how to prioritize her academic responsibility to a journal and her social responsibilities to her community. The tweet accrued nearly two thousand retweets and replies from fellow faculty including “Isn’t that the truth?” and “I’m in the same boat.” One response asked whether the journal had issued a formal statement against an executive order, suggesting that if it had not, Professor Stern should no longer be willing to review. Read More

NEW EVENT (4/18)! Healing in the Wake of Community Violence: Lessons from Newtown and Beyond – Panel discussion and screening of the documentary Newtown (2016)

NEW EVENT: Healing in the Wake of Community Violence: Lessons from Newtown and Beyond imageHealing in the Wake of Community Violence: Lessons from Newtown and Beyond: Panel discussion and screening of the documentary Newtown (2016)

April 18, 2017 4:00pm screening; 5:30pm panel discussion

Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East ABC
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Register for this event

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required. Register here.

Join us for a film screening and panel discussion on challenges that arise from tragic acts of community violence. The event will begin with a screening of Newtown, a documentary examining the impact of the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. The screening will be followed by a panel of experts in health law policy, the neurobiology of trauma, and community approaches to violence in a discussion of public health, gun violence, and responses to community trauma. Discussion will highlight the issue of “healing the helpers”—the first responders, medical staff, clergy, mental health providers, and others who respond to the needs of victims, families, and communities in the wake of community violence.

Welcome

  • Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Panelists

  • Michelle Bosquet Enlow, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School and Associate in Psychology, Boston Children’s Hospital
  • Rufus J. Faulk, Program Director, Gang Mediation Initiative, Boston TenPoint Coalition
  • Wendy Parmet, Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Law, and Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Education and Research Support, Northeastern University School of Law; Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
  • Moderator: Ahmed Ragab, Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion and Director, Science, Religion, and Culture Program, Harvard Divinity School

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required. Register here.

Part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Cosponsored by William James College and the Science, Religion, and Culture Program at Harvard Divinity School.

PANEL (4/3): Opiate Regulation Policies – Balancing Pain and Addiction

Opiate Regulation Policies: Balancing Pain and Addiction 

April 3, 2017 12:00 PM

Austin Hall, West Classroom (111)
Harvard Law School, 1515 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Description

The current opiate epidemic has spurred long-overdue scrutiny on the pharmaceutical production and distribution of opiate medication, but it also raises questions of public policy and law regarding the regulation of medical access to and use of opiate medications with high potential for addiction. Expert panelists will address the challenges that arise from efforts to balance restrictions on access to opiates to limit addiction while also preserving sufficient access for legitimate medical management of pain.

Panelists

  • Monica Bharel, MD, MPH, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Public Health
  • David Borsook, MD, PhD, Professor in Anesthesiology, Harvard Medical School; co-director, Center for Pain and the Brain at Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McLean Hospital; and affiliated faculty, Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Rita Nieves, Deputy Director, Boston Public Health Commission
  • Moderator: Amanda C. Pustilnik, JDProfessor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law; affiliated faculty, Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital; and 2014-2015 Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience as part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center

This event is free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided.

Learn More

Check out the new EdX course “The Opioid Crisis in America,” developed by faculty at Harvard Medical School, to learn more about opioid addiction, evidence-based treatment models, harm reduction approaches that law enforcement and public health officials are using to reduce opioid overdose deaths, and non-opioid alternatives for medical pain management. This online course is free and self-paced; the first session will be available online on March 27, 2017.

Part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Webinars: ASPPH Two-Part Series on PHLR

CPHLR is joining forces with the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) for a free, two-part webinar series on public health law research and policy data evaluation.

Public Health Law Research Part I: Creating and Using Open-Source Policy Data for Public Health Evaluation Research
March 29 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Will introduce participants to the practice of Policy Surveillance and the various law and policy datasets available through LawAtlas and other open-source portals.
REGISTER >>

Public Health Law Research Part II: Developing and Implementing a Policy Evaluation Using Open-Source Legal Data
April 12 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Will introduce participants to the theory, design and implementation of a policy evaluation using policy surveillance datasets.
REGISTER >>