Global Health - Bill of Health

Highlights from the Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference: Part I

April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Guest Blogger Dan Traficonte

Recently, the Petrie-Flom Center sent me to the 6th Annual Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference in downtown Boston, where students, researchers and health professionals from around the world gathered to network and share ideas. The conference’s focus covered a broad range of pressing global health issues, including the Ebola crisis of 2014, food security, and the impact of climate change on the health of populations worldwide. I was able to meet and chat with many people doing fascinating work in the global health field, and I will highlight here a few of the most interesting presentations linked directly to issues of law, governance, and health policy.

Dr. Pooja Agrawal from the Yale School of Medicine presented her research on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on health insurance access, coverage, and costs for refugees resettled in the United States. Dr. Agrawal’s research sought to assess the relationship between refugee resettlement patterns and improvements to health insurance access created by the ACA—specifically, are refugees in the United States generally able to benefit from the enactment of Medicaid expansion and implementation of healthcare insurance exchanges?

Using a cross-sectional analysis of 2012 refugee resettlement data from all 50 states, Dr. Agrawal compared resettlement trends for states that have expanded Medicaid and implemented exchange schemes and those states that have not. The results of this analysis indicate that in 2012, more refugees were resettled to states that have not expanded Medicaid or created state health insurance exchanges. Though there is currently no data on the effect of these differences on refugee health outcomes, these results implicate important policy concerns: specifically, the architects of refugee resettlement policies may choose to consider between-state variation in access to insurance as a result of the ACA in devising resettlement strategies. Dr. Agrawal’s research highlights an often-underemphasized area of intersection of law and social policy, and calls for more research on the impact of the ACA on refugee populations in the United States.

Dan Traficonte is a 1L at Harvard Law School interested in the intersection of global health and international development.

Biosecurity in a Globalised World Conference: The Adoption of the Revised International Health Regulations – 10 Years On

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS AND REGISTRATION OPEN!

In 2015 it will be 10 years since the adoption of the revised International Health Regulations (IHR). To mark this important anniversary, QUT’s Australian Centre for Health Law Research is pleased to invite you to Biosecurity in a Globalised World: The Adoption of the Revised International Health Regulations – 10 Years On.

The conference will be hosted by the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point campus in Brisbane from 27-28 July 2015.

The conference will provide a forum for scholars and policy makers to discuss and present on the progress achieved through the IHR to date, and the important work yet to be done.

The keynote address will be delivered by Professor Lawrence O. Gostin, Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law, Georgetown University, USA.

Themes to be discussed at the conference include:

Development of IHR core capacities
Regulatory responses
Securitisation of infectious disease outbreaks
Human rights
Papers from all disciplines and areas of expertise are welcome.

For further information please visit https://ihr2015.com/

If you have any questions, or require any assistance, please contact ihr2015@qut.edu.au

TOMORROW (3/11): Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach Book Launch

March 10, 2015March 10, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Book Launch: Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach

March 11, 2015 12:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012 Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach is an edited volume that grew out of the 2012 conference “Identified versus Statistical Lives: Ethics and Public Policy,” cosponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the Harvard Global Health Institute. The essays address the identified lives effect, which describes the fact that people demonstrate a stronger inclination to assist persons and groups identified as at high risk of great harm than those who will or already suffer similar harm, but endure unidentified. As a result of this effect, we allocate resources reactively rather than proactively, prioritizing treatment over prevention. Such bias raises practical and ethical questions that extend to almost every aspect of human life and politics.

The book talk and discussion will feature:

I. Glenn Cohen, co-editor, Petrie-Flom Faculty Director, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Norman Daniels, co-editor, Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
Nir Eyal, co-editor, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine (Medical Ethics), Harvard Medical School

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library, with support from the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Pakistan’s “Last-Ditch Effort” To Eradicate Polio

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015 Michele Goodwin Leave a comment

Allison M. Whelan, J.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Guest Blogger

In a previous post, I discussed three possible methods of increasing vaccination and decreasing vaccine refusals in the United States. One of these options was using tort law and allowing lawsuits against parents for refusing/failing to vaccinate their children. The Pakistani government has recently taken it one step further, arresting and issuing arrest warrants for parents refusing to vaccinate their children against polio. Last week, approximately 512 people, 471 in Peshawar and 41 in Nowshera, were arrested and jailed and arrest warrants were issued for 1,200 more parents for refusing to vaccinate their children.

Currently, the government allows parents to be released from jail and return home if they sign an affidavit promising to vaccinate their children. Despite the fact there is no law requiring polio vaccination, some view the recent crackdown as “a blessing in disguise” for unvaccinated children. This drastic approach responds to high rates of refusal, a contributing factor to Pakistan’s significant number of polio cases. According to the World Health Organization, in the period since March 2014 Pakistan registered 296 polio cases, the most in the world and drastically higher than even the second-highest rate of 26 cases registered by Afghanistan. Why is Pakistan’s vaccination rate so low? For many reasons, including religious beliefs, attacks on medical workers, displacement of individuals due to ongoing military operations, and a lack of trust in health care workers and the vaccine. Read More

Thailand Bans Foreign Commercial Surrogacy

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015 Michele Goodwin 2 Comments

Allison M. Whelan, J.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Guest Blogger

Thailand’s interim parliament recently passed a law prohibiting foreigners from seeking Thai surrogates. The law was proposed and passed in response to several recent scandals and the growing surrogacy industry that has made Thailand one of the top destinations for “fertility tourism.” One of the most publicized controversies was “Gammy’s case,” in which a baby boy born to a Thai surrogate for an Australian man (the baby’s genetic father) and his wife was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. The couple abandoned Gammy but took his healthy twin sister. The Thai surrogate also claimed the parents asked her to abort both children when she was seven months pregnant. And in August 2014, authorities discovered that the 24-year old son of a Japanese billionaire had fathered at least a dozen babies by hiring surrogate mothers through Thai clinics.

The law makes commercial surrogacy a crime and bans foreign couples from seeking surrogacy services. The law does not, however, appear to prohibit non-commercial surrogacy among Thai citizens, provided that the surrogate is over twenty-five years old. Violations carry a prison sentence of up to ten years. Wanlop Tankananurak, a member of Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly, hailed the law, stating that it “aims to stop Thai women’s wombs from becoming the world’s womb.” Read More

What Ebola Teaches Us About Public Health In America

February 11, 2015February 11, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

This new post by George Annas appears on the Health Affairs Blog, as part of part of a series stemming from the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 30, 2015.

2014 saw an epidemic of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, and an epidemic of fear in the US. Neither epidemic covered public health in glory. For Science, Ebola was the “breakdown of the year;” the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health called it “the most important public health story” of the year; Politfact labeled it the political “lie of the year,” and Time magazine named “the Ebola fighters” its “Person of the Year.” All of these characterizations contain some truth.

Response to the epidemic in Africa relied heavily on volunteer organizations, especially Christian charity groups like Samaritan’s Purse and SIM (Serving In Mission), and medical NGOs, most notably Doctors Without Borders (MSF). It was MSF that called out the World Health Organization (WHO) for its failure to recognize the epidemic, and then its inability to respond to it. Their International Health Regulations, it turned out, were much more like guidelines than any form of law, and the WHO had no capacity to effectively respond to a new epidemic. […]

Read the full post here.

A global treaty is needed for antibiotic resistance

February 6, 2015February 6, 2015 koutterson Leave a comment

By Kevin Outterson

Or so we claim in this month’s WHO Bulletin. Resistance is a global common pool problem requiring simultaneous action on three fronts: access to effective antibiotics (many more deaths from susceptible bacterial infections currently); conservation (protect and extend the most effective drug class in history through rational use and infection prevention); and innovation (new drugs, diagnostics, vaccines and agricultural practices). Providing any one alone is counterproductive over the long term: access alone will speed resistance; conservation alone denies access and undermines innovation incentives; innovation alone brings more drugs to the market, but without safeguards to prolong their usefulness and to ensure that low income populations have access to these life saving therapies.

See also this Chatham House Members’ Event last Wednesday on how resistance threatens global health security, with audio.

@koutterson

Tomorrow (2/5): A Right to Health? A Lecture by John Tasioulas

February 4, 2015February 4, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

A Right to Health? A lecture by John Tasioulas

Thursday, February 5, 2015 12:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Room 3019
Harvard Law School
1589 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA

There have been recent calls to establish a framework convention on health grounded in the human right to health. But is there really a human right to health? If there is, what does it entitle us to, and how do we decide? This lecture by John Tasioulas will offer new answers to these questions, and will further argue that global health policy has to be responsive to all human rights, not just the right to health, and that we must address more than human rights in order to create effective global health policy. Response by I. Glenn Cohen.

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

Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.

Art Caplan: Ebola, Measles And Chris Christie’s Inconsistent Healthcare Beliefs

February 2, 2015February 2, 2015 acaplan Leave a comment

A new piece by Art Caplan on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s recent statements, via Forbes:

New Jersey Governor and likely presidential candidate Chris Christie is responsible for the current measles outbreak in the United States. Well that is a bit of a stretch – but not by much. The Governor just can’t figure out where he stands in balancing the public good against individual rights.

When Ebola reached his state last October in the form of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had treated Ebola patients in West Africa, Christie ordered her held in a plastic tent near Newark with no running water, reliable heat or any other amenities. Hickox had no symptoms. She knew she was not infectious. She said she did not want to be quarantined in inhumane circumstances like a criminal.

Christie did not budge. “I have no reason to talk to her,” he said. “… I understand that she didn’t want to be there. She made that very clear from the beginning but my obligation is to all the people of New Jersey and we’re just going to continue to do that.”

THIS WEEK: 2/5, A Right to Health? A lecture by John Tasioulas

February 2, 2015February 2, 2015 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment