Category: Human Rights

Geneva, Switzerland - December 03, 2019: World Health Organization (WHO / OMS).

International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues — Launch Editorial

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By Joelle Grogan, on behalf of the editors*

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Lire en français.

This symposium, “International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues,” was convened with two primary aims: to shed light on the inequities and imbalances exposed by global pandemic response, and to advocate recommendations on which principles should guide the framing and drafting of a potential international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response.

However, while good principle can guide good action, to be effective it must be more than good principle; and more substance is needed than good design. Thus, these symposium posts published on Monday through Thursday on Bill of Health and the Verfassungsblog, along with our accompanying editorials, look not only to the design of such an instrument, but also its implementation and enforcement.

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Envelope from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with the American flag on top/U.S. immigration concept.

Health Justice for Immigrants, Revisited

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By Medha D. Makhlouf

A major contribution of health justice is that it provides a framework for understanding how universal access to health care protects collective, as well as individual, interests. The pandemic has underscored the collective nature of the health and wellbeing of every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status.

In a 2019 article, Health Justice for Immigrants, I adopted and adapted the health justice framework to the problem of disparities in immigrant access to subsidized health coverage. I argued that, in future health care reforms, health justice requires that immigrants be included in the “universe” of universal access to health care. In this blog post, I revisit this argument in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This blog post applies the health justice lens to inequities in immigrant health and access to health care, drawing out lessons for the pandemic and post-pandemic eras. It describes three examples illustrating the utility of health justice for catalyzing cross-sector initiatives to improve health, reducing the role of bias in the design of interventions to address health disparities, and ensuring that such efforts are serving the needs of historically subordinated communities.

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Bracket fungi, or shelf fungi produce shelf- or bracket-shaped or occasionally circular fruiting bodies called conks. They are mainly found on trees.

Whack-a-Mole, Fungi, and Intersectionality, or What I’ve Learned from Health Justice

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By Mary Crossley

Nearly three decades ago, I published my first law review article considering the law’s ability to address unequal treatment in a health care setting. The newly minted Americans with Disabilities Act was the law, and physicians’ reluctance to provide treatment to infants believed to be infected with HIV was the inequality. Eventually I expanded my horizon beyond disability law to consider potential legal remedies for physician bias across a range of patient traits. As I did so, I described the thread tying together my scholarly projects as “how the law responds (or fails to respond) to instances of health care inequality.”

The key word in that description was “instances.” It suggested that health inequality presents discrete problems for the law to address. Given those problems’ ubiquity, however, policy makers, regulators, and advocates deploying law against health inequities found themselves in a game of Whack-a-Mole. Whack one mole, and another one pops its head up. Address one instance of health injustice, and another pops up. The problem is that, no matter how quick our reaction times are, health inequality surrounds us, firmly embedded in American society. We need to look deeper to find its roots.

Over the last decade, the development of health justice frameworks, along with increasing public and legal attention to social determinants of health, have changed how I frame my scholarship, in several ways.

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A range of contraceptive methods: DMPA, vaginal ring, IUD, emergency contraceptive, contraceptive pills.

Connecting the Dots: Reproductive Justice + Research Justice = Health Justice

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By Monica R. McLemore

I believe that together, reproductive justice and research justice should result in health justice.

I am choosing to focus on research because it is the evidence base that is foundational to clinical care provision and because teaching is generated by research.

Thus, research serves as one root cause of harm associated with clinical care and teaching, and a potential barrier to realizing health justice, which has been outlined as a comprehensive approach to resolve the social determinants of health and develop jurisprudence toward health equity. Research justice is critical to the conceptualization, development and implementation of these measures.

However, the law cannot establish health justice without reproductive justice, at least not for pregnant-capable people. Reproductive health, rights, and justice have been the proverbial canaries in the coal mine when considering the loss of bodily autonomy and human rights.

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Scales of justice and gavel on table.

Symposium Introduction: Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy

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By Ruqaiijah Yearby and Lindsay F. Wiley

Public health scholars, advocates, and officials have long recognized that factors outside an individual’s control act as barriers to individual and community health.

To strive for health equity, in which everyone “has the opportunity to attain . . . full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or any other socially defined circumstance,” many have adopted the social determinants of health (SDOH) model, which identifies social and economic factors that shape health. Yet, health equity has remained elusive in the United States, in part because the frameworks that most prominently guide health reform do not adequately address subordination as the root cause of health inequity, focus too much on individuals, and fail to center community voices and perspectives.

The health justice movement seeks to fill these gaps. Based in part on principles from the reproductive justice, environmental justice, food justice, and civil rights movements, the health justice movement rejects the notion that health inequity is an individual phenomenon best explained and addressed by focusing on health-related behaviors and access to health care. Instead it focuses on health inequity as a social phenomenon demanding wide-ranging structural interventions.

This digital symposium, part of the Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law & Policy Initiative launched in 2020, seeks to further define the contours of and debates within the health justice movement and explore how scholars, activists, communities, and public health officials can use health justice frameworks to achieve health equity.

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St. Paul, Minnesota /US - June 4, 2020: Police throand protestors during the protests following the murder of George Floyd.

Research and Regulation of Less-Lethal Projectiles Critically Needed

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By Rohini Haar and Brian Castner

In 2020, the use of less-lethal weapons in the United States, already overused, took a sharp upturn during the police response to the Black Lives Matter protests. In response, last month, the U.S. House of Representatives formed a commission of inquiry to investigate the health effects of one such weapon: tear gas. Such research is welcome and badly needed. However, tear gas is only part of a larger story. While well-intentioned, the House missed an opportunity to address a wider and more dangerous issue: the use of “less-lethal” projectiles against crowds.

In protecting basic human rights and civil liberties, it is critical to better understand and regulate projectiles — they are dangerous and poorly studied weapons.

Regardless of their specific characteristics, all less-lethal projectiles work by the same principle: they inflict blunt trauma, pain, and intimidation on individuals, while attempting to limit the chances of death or disability as compared to live ammunition. While the weapons certainly do cause shock and pain, avoiding death and disability has not been so straightforward.

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New Market, Esplanade, Kolkata, 05-23-2021: Due to lockdown, closed market and roadside hawker stalls at S. S. Hogg Market, which usually is heavily crowded as a popular shopping arena.

A Critical Analysis of the Eurocentric Response to COVID-19: Global Classism

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By Hayley Evans

The international response to COVID-19 has paid insufficient attention to the realities in the Global South, making the response Eurocentric in several ways.

The first post in this series scrutinized the technification of the international response to COVID-19. The second post looked at how the international pandemic response reflects primarily Western ideas of health, which in turn exacerbates negative health outcomes in the Global South.

This third and final installment analyzes the classist approach to the pandemic response. The international response has paid insufficient attention to the existence of the informal economy and of the needs of those who must work to eat — both of which are found more commonly in the Global South.

This series draws on primary research conducted remotely with diverse actors on the ground in Colombia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom, as well as secondary research gathered through periodicals, webinars, an online course in contact tracing, and membership in the Ecological Rights Working Group of the Global Pandemic Network. I have written about previous findings from this work here.

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globe.

A Critical Analysis of the Eurocentric Response to COVID-19: Western Ideas of Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Hayley Evans

The international response to COVID-19 has paid insufficient attention to the realities in the Global South, making the response Eurocentric in several ways.

This series of blog posts looks at three aspects of the COVID-19 response that underscore this Eurocentrism. The first post in this series scrutinized the technification of the international response to COVID-19. This second post looks at how the international pandemic response reflects primarily Western ideas of health, which in turn exacerbates negative health outcomes in the Global South.

This series draws on primary research conducted remotely with diverse actors on the ground in Colombia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom, as well as secondary research gathered through periodicals, webinars, an online course in contact tracing, and membership in the Ecological Rights Working Group of the Global Pandemic Network. I have written about previous findings from this work here.

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Bolivar Square with Cathedral and Colombian Palace of Justice - Bogota, Colombia.

The Stakes of the Pending Colombian Constitutional Court Abortion Decision

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By Alicia Ely Yamin

Amid the massive social protests wracking Colombia, the Colombian Constitutional Court is currently considering whether to decriminalize abortion beyond the narrow exceptions already recognized in law.

The petition was brought before the court by the Causa Justa (“Just Cause”) movement, a group of activists and organizations who argue that the country’s broad criminalization of abortion through Article 122 of the Penal Code poses an unconstitutional violation of women’s rights.

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCT. 8, 2019: Rally for LGBTQ rights outside Supreme Court as Justices hear oral arguments in three cases dealing with discrimination in the workplace because of sexual orientation.

The Many Harms of State Bills Blocking Youth Access to Gender-Affirming Care

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By Chloe Reichel

State legislation blocking trans youth from accessing gender-affirming care puts kids at risk, thwarts physician autonomy, and potentially violates a number of federal laws, write Jack L. Turban, Katherine L. Kraschel, and I. Glenn Cohen in a viewpoint published today in JAMA.

So far this year, 15 states have proposed bills that would limit access to gender-affirming care. One of these bills, Arkansas’ HB1570/SB347, already has become law.

This legislative trend should be troubling to all, explained Cohen, Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. In an email interview, he highlighted “how exceptionally restrictive these proposed laws are,” adding that they are “out of step with usual medical, ethical, and legal rules regarding discretion of the medical profession and space for parental decision-making.”

Turban, child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine also offered further insight as to the medical and legal concerns these bills raise over email.

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