People taking part in the "Lights4Liberty" protests against President Trump's planned ICE raids against immigrants and the detention centers along the southern border. The protestor is carrying a sign that reads, "Child detention camps destroy children."

Memory, Trauma, and Asylum Law: A Role for Neuroscience?

This post is part of our Eighth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium. You can read all of the posts in the series here. Learn more about the event and stay tuned for video of each session on the Petrie-Flom Center’s website.

By Francis X. Shen and Aldis H. Petriceks

Today hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers await their hearings. Multiple studies conducted in 2019 confirmed that the conditions of detainment are often deplorable. The federal government recently acknowledged a lack of adequate medical and mental health care at the Southern Border, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a 200-page report documenting the Human Cost of Inhumane Immigration Policies, highlighting the severe damage to child and adult mental health at the border. All the while, despite public outrage and government claims to the contrary, family separation has remained prevalent. Read More

Eighth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review: Looking Back & Reaching Ahead

This post is part of our Eighth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium. You can read all of the posts in the series here. Review the conference’s full agenda and register for the event on the Petrie-Flom Center’s website.

By Prof. I. Glenn Cohen and Kaitlyn Dowling

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics is excited to host the Eighth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review to be held at Harvard Law School December 6, 2019. This one-day conference is free and open to the public and will convene leading experts across health law policy, health sciences, technology, and ethics to discuss major developments in the field over the past year and invites them to contemplate what 2020 may hold. This year’s event will focus on developments in health information technology, the challenge of increasing health care coverage, immigration, the 2020 election, gene editing, and drug pricing, among other topic areas.

As we come to the end of another year in health law, the event will give us both a post-mortem on the biggest trends in 2019 and also some predictions on what’s to come in 2020.

Among the topics we will discuss: Read More

The Week in Health Law podcast logo twihl.com

New TWIHL with Melissa Keyes, Heather Walter-McCabe, Stacey Tovino, & Ruqaiijah Yearby

By Nicolas Terry

This episode was recorded at our recent conference entitled Getting Real About Health Care for All. An outstanding panel at the conference was asked the question, “Can We Make Health Care Inclusive?” To answer that question we welcomed Melissa Keyes, Heather Walter-McCabe, Stacey Tovino, and Ruqaiijah Yearby. They approached the question from the perspective of those commonly excluded from quality healthcare; those along the capacity spectrum, members of the LGBTQ communities, those suffering from mental health or substance use disorders, and those requiring home or facility-based long-term care.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in health law and policy. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Google Play, listen at Stitcher Radio, SpotifyTunein or Podbean.

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 me on Twitter @nicolasterry or @WeekInHealthLaw.

Subscribe to TWIHL here!

First-person perspective photograph of a health care worker holding up a mask used to prevent the spread of germs

The Big Winner in Trump’s Newest Immigration Policies: The Flu

By Robert Field

The influenza virus gained an important ally during the past few weeks: the Trump Administration. If you have been rooting for a widespread and virulent flu epidemic this winter, several of its new immigration policies should give you reason to cheer.

The first bit of good news for flu fans is a decision to withhold vaccination from children held in Customs and Border Protection detention centers. These facilities are supposed to hold migrants for no longer than three days, but many remain much longer, and the centers are often severely overcrowded. Since the flu can be quite serious, this puts the thousands of children held in them at increased risk of major illness or death.

Read More