Call for Proposals: Symposium – Serving the Needs of Medicaid Populations

The Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Annals of Health Law invite original research paper submissions for presentation at our Twelfth Annual Health Law Symposium: Serving the Needs of Medicaid Populations. The Symposium will take place at Loyola University Chicago School of Law on Friday, November 16, 2018.

The Symposium will explore whether the current Medicaid system is adequately serving the needs of its target population, and how social determinants of health affect access to care in the context of Medicaid. The Symposium is intended to touch upon a wide variety of areas responsive to this overall theme.  Accordingly, we invite submissions addressing any and all aspects of Medicaid and/or its impact upon accessible, quality patient care. Possible approaches to this Call for Proposals include, but are not limited to:

  • Medicaid’s impact on the financial viability of hospital systems and physician practices and the effect this has on access to health care. Topics may explore the financial burdens and/or benefits faced by health systems after Medicaid expansion, economic viability of health systems in states that did not expand Medicaid, and corporate restructuring in the wake of Medicaid reform.
  • The current status of Medicaid in relation to access to health care. Topics may include the health access trends within states that expanded or shrunk Medicaid, state use of Medicaid waivers, Medicaid work requirements, and shifts in DHHS practices and policies.
  • Populations underserved by Medicaid. Topics may explore immigrant access to care in Medicaid, access problems surrounding individuals with medical complexities, and children with disabilities in Medicaid.
  • Proposals to reform Medicaid in order to increase access and reduce social disparities. Topics may include new proposed models that increase access to care, the ACA’s role in expanding access under Medicaid, and bridging the disconnect between health care spending and health outcomes in the United States through Medicaid reform.

Submission Information: Those interested in participating, please send a 1000-word abstract to health-law@luc.edu by June 16, 2018.  Authors will be notified of decisions no later than July 14, 2018. It is our hope presenters will submit papers for publication in the Annals of Health Law. Papers submitted for publication will be due by January 8, 2019.

Call for Papers: Wiet Life Sciences Scholars Conference

Loyola University Chicago’s nationally acclaimed Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy is pleased to invite original research submissions for the annual Wiet Life Science Law Scholars Conference to be held on Friday, September 7, 2018.

The conference is designed to provide an intellectual venue for life science professors, scholars, and practitioners to convene and discuss current research and scholarship.  The phrase “life science law” intends to capture diverse disciplines that involve significant issues of life science research and development, spanning food and drug law, health law, intellectual property (IP) law, biotechnology law, environmental law, administrative law, and antitrust law.  Our goal is to foster recognition of life science law as a cohesive, dynamic area of legal study and strengthen connections among national life science law scholars.

Loyola is currently soliciting 750-1,000 word abstracts reflecting early or mid-stage ideas for the purpose of workshopping with other conference scholars.  Modeled after successful events for law professors and scholars in other areas, we will organize scholars in topical panels of three to five authors with approximately 15 minutes allotted to each abstract presentation, followed by 15 minutes of intensive discussion with scholar attendees.  Author abstracts will be distributed one week prior to the conference to scholar participants; authors may also submit draft articles for distribution.  Scholars are expected to review materials of fellow panel members.

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Call For Abstracts, Due 10/15! Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics – PFC’s 2018 Annual Conference

“Congress acknowledged that society’s accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.” Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., School Bd. of Nassau, Fl. v. Arline, 480 U.S. 273 (1973).

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2018 annual conference, entitled: “Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics.” This year’s conference is organized in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.

Conference Description

disability-law-bioethics_slideHistorically and across societies people with disabilities have been stigmatized and excluded from social opportunities on a variety of culturally specific grounds. These justifications include assertions that people with disabilities are biologically defective, less than capable, costly, suffering, or fundamentally inappropriate for social inclusion. Rethinking the idea of disability so as to detach being disabled from inescapable disadvantage has been considered a key to twenty-first century reconstruction of how disablement is best understood. Read More

Copenhagen Conference: Legal Perspectives on Synthetic Biology and Gene Editing

Join us at the Centre for Information and Innovation Law (CIIR) Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen on 20 November, 2017 to discuss Legal Perspectives on Synthetic Biology and Gene Editing.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Emerging technologies in Synthetic Biology and Gene Editing offer incredible opportunities and promising solutions to some of the most urgent challenges faced by humanity, such as climate change, environmental protection, growing population, renewable energy and improved health care. But the emerging applications also raise exceptional ethical, legal and social questions.

This conference marks the final phase of the participation of the Copenhagen Biotech and Pharma Forum (CBPF) Research Group at the Centre for Information and Innovation Law (CIIR) in the cross-faculty research project BioSYNergy. In accordance with the goals of this large cross-faculty project on Synthetic Biology, the event explores legal perspectives on synthetic biology, systems biology and gene editing. Dealing with the legal responses to ethical and scientific challenges raised by emerging life science technology. Read More

Call for Abstracts: Wiet Life Sciences Law Scholars Conference

Loyola University Chicago’s nationally acclaimed Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy is pleased to invite original research submissions for its inaugural Wiet Life Science Law Scholars Conference on Friday, October 13, 2017.

The conference is designed to provide a new intellectual venue for life science professors, scholars, and practitioners to convene and discuss current research and scholarship. The phrase “life science law” aims to capture research and disciplines spanning food and drug law, health law, intellectual property (IP), biotechnology, environmental, administrative, antitrust, and other realms that involve the life sciences in some meaningful respect. Our goal is to foster recognition of life science law as a cohesive, dynamic, area of legal study and strengthen connections among national life science law scholars.

Loyola is currently soliciting 750-1,000 word abstracts reflecting early or mid-stage ideas for the purpose of workshopping with other conference scholars. Modeled after successful events for law professors and scholars in other areas, participants will be organized in topical panels of three to five authors with approximately 15-20 minutes allotted to each abstract presentation, followed by discussions with scholar attendees. Abstracts from the authors will be distributed one week prior to the conference; authors may also submit draft articles for distribution to conference attendees.

SUBMISSION AND REVIEW TIMELINE: The deadline for 750-1,000 word abstracts, including author contact information is June 15. Submit via email to health-law@luc.edu with subject line Wiet Life Science Law.

Authors will be notified of speaker selections by email on or before July 15.

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Advancing the Global Patient Safety Agenda

By John Tingle and Jen Minford

All too often it seems that patient safety and health quality policy makers work in their own silos unaware of what is taking place in other countries, wasting valuable resources by trying to re-invent the wheel. There is a clear need to have a way of cascading the news down on what is happening in patient safety globally. Developing and transitioning countries do not always have the resources to build up patient safety infrastructures, tools and policies and letting them know about initiatives going on in other countries fulfils a very important global public health need.

There is also the concept of ‘reverse innovation’.  Developed countries’ patient safety practices and policies can be informed by the experiences of developing and transitioning countries who may be using them in a different and novel way. Patient safety learning can be a two-way street. Read More

Call for Papers – European Pharmaceutical Law Review (EPLR)

Dear Colleagues,

I am happy to announce that I have just joined the Board of Editors of the new journal “European Pharmaceutical Law Review” (EPLR). One of my first tasks is to spread the news about our “Call for Papers”. Further information is available here.

The European Pharmaceutical Law Review (EPLR) reports on key legislative developments in the EU and the Member States, and identifies and analyses important judgments that shape the interpretation and application of EU pharmaceutical law, in particular those by the European Courts, international courts and tribunals such as the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, and higher national courts.

In order to establish itself as a forum for dialogue between different stakeholders in pharmaceutical regulation and governance, it will invite contributions from academics, practitioners, regulators and civil society representatives. Topics covered by EPLR include:

  • Pharmaceutical law and policy in all jurisdictions (regional, national, international);
  • Commission decisions (EMA opinions) and regulatory guidelines;
  • National EU, and International Jurisprudence;
  • Medical devices;
  • Borderline cases: pharmaceuticals/food/cosmetics/chemicals
  • Patents /Trademarks;
  • Health Technology Assessment and pricing/reimbursement;
  • Digital health/Big data;

All contributions will be subject to double blind peer-review before acceptance for publication and are required to conform to the author guidelines.

We are looking forward to receive and review the first submissions!

Best wishes/ Timo

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, DUE TODAY, 12/2! Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits

Medical care prices against a white background

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2017 annual conference, entitled: Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits.

Transparency is a relatively new concept to the world of health and health care, considering that just a few short decades ago we were still in the throes of a “doctor-knows-best” model. Today, however, transparency is found on almost every short list of solutions to a variety of health policy problems, ranging from conflicts of interest to rising drug costs to promoting efficient use of health care resources, and more. Doctors are now expected to be transparent about patient diagnoses and treatment options, hospitals are expected to be transparent about error rates, insurers about policy limitations, companies about prices, researchers about data, and policymakers about priorities and rationales for health policy intervention. But a number of important legal and ethical questions remain. For example, what exactly does transparency mean in the context of health, who has a responsibility to be transparent and to whom, what legal mechanisms are there to promote transparency, and what legal protections are needed for things like privacy, intellectual property, and the like?  More specifically, when can transparency improve health and health care, and when is it likely to be nothing more than platitude?

This conference, and anticipated edited volume, will aim to: (1) identify the various thematic roles transparency has been called on to play in American health policy, and why it has emerged in these spaces; (2) understand when, where, how, and why transparency may be a useful policy tool in relation to health and health care, what it can realistically be expected to achieve, and when it is unlikely to be successful, including limits on how patients and consumers utilize information even when we have transparency; (3) assess the legal and ethical issues raised by transparency in health and health care, including obstacles and opportunities; (4) learn from comparative examples of transparency, both in other sectors and outside the United States.  In sum, we hope to reach better understandings of this health policy buzzword so that transparency can be utilized as a solution to pressing health policy issues where appropriate, while recognizing its true limitations.

Call for Abstracts

We welcome submissions on both the broad conceptual questions described above and more specific policy issues, including: Read More

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, DUE 12/2! 2017 Annual Conference, “Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits”

Medical care prices against a white background

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2017 annual conference, entitled: Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits.

Transparency is a relatively new concept to the world of health and health care, considering that just a few short decades ago we were still in the throes of a “doctor-knows-best” model. Today, however, transparency is found on almost every short list of solutions to a variety of health policy problems, ranging from conflicts of interest to rising drug costs to promoting efficient use of health care resources, and more. Doctors are now expected to be transparent about patient diagnoses and treatment options, hospitals are expected to be transparent about error rates, insurers about policy limitations, companies about prices, researchers about data, and policymakers about priorities and rationales for health policy intervention. But a number of important legal and ethical questions remain. For example, what exactly does transparency mean in the context of health, who has a responsibility to be transparent and to whom, what legal mechanisms are there to promote transparency, and what legal protections are needed for things like privacy, intellectual property, and the like?  More specifically, when can transparency improve health and health care, and when is it likely to be nothing more than platitude?

This conference, and anticipated edited volume, will aim to: (1) identify the various thematic roles transparency has been called on to play in American health policy, and why it has emerged in these spaces; (2) understand when, where, how, and why transparency may be a useful policy tool in relation to health and health care, what it can realistically be expected to achieve, and when it is unlikely to be successful, including limits on how patients and consumers utilize information even when we have transparency; (3) assess the legal and ethical issues raised by transparency in health and health care, including obstacles and opportunities; (4) learn from comparative examples of transparency, both in other sectors and outside the United States.  In sum, we hope to reach better understandings of this health policy buzzword so that transparency can be utilized as a solution to pressing health policy issues where appropriate, while recognizing its true limitations.

Call for Abstracts

We welcome submissions on both the broad conceptual questions described above and more specific policy issues, including: Read More