The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our affiliated researchers for the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) and our new project, Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience (PULSE). Through research, writing, workshops, and other projects, POPLAR and PULSE affiliated researchers will provide expertise and a range of perspectives on psychedelics law and policy. We look forward to learning from them and sharing their insights with our audiences.
Category: Petrie-Flom Center
Q&A with PFC Director of Global Health and Rights Project, Alicia Ely Yamin
Alicia Ely Yamin J.D. (1991), M.P.H. (1996), Ph.D. is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics (PFC) at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Adviser on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.
Frequently labelled a scholar-activist, she combines academic research and scholarship that bridges law, development, and public health with grassroots work and policy advocacy. She has lived in seven countries on four continents, and worked with and for local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).
In the interview below, she shares more about her career and life.
Introducing the Global Health and Rights Project’s New Affiliated Researchers
(Clockwise from top left: Daniela Cepeda Cuadrado, Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos, Thalia Viveros Uehara)
The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to welcome four new affiliated researchers to the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP).
Through regular contributions to Bill of Health, as well as workshops and other projects, GHRP affiliated researchers will bring their expertise to bear on both national and global problems, advancing critical socio-legal scholarship both within and beyond Latin America. We look forward to learning from and sharing their insights with a wider audience, and to contributing to enlarging international networks of critical praxis in global health and human rights.
Petrie-Flom Welcomes 2023-2024 Student Fellows
(Clockwise from top left: Joelle Boxer, Adithi Iyer, Vincent Joralemon, Hannah Rahim, Bobby Stroup)
We are excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These five students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from Harvard Law School.
They each will undertake a year-long research project with mentorship from Center faculty and affiliates, and also will blog here at Bill of Health regularly. Keep an eye out for their bylines!
Opill’s FDA Approval: Implications for Pharmaceutical Regulation and Access to Care
By James René Jolin and Susannah Baruch
On July 13, 2023, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Opill (norgestrel) as the first daily oral contraceptive available for non-prescription use in the U.S. While the timeline for availability and price of Opill will ultimately be set by its manufacturer, Perrigo, this recent move represents a significant step forward in improving access to contraceptive health care. Indeed, shortly after Opill’s approval, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists described the FDA’s decision as “a critically important advancement in the accessibility of reproductive health care.”
In response to this development, Petrie-Flom Center intern James René Jolin and Executive Director Susannah Baruch sat down to discuss its legal, regulatory, and public health implications. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
303 Creative, Transgender Rights, and the Ongoing Culture Wars
By Michael R. Ulrich
The Supreme Court’s ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis suggests a willingness to ignore the rights and health implications for minority populations under the guise of protecting against theoretical harms. The decision is a crucial blow to strides made in achieving gay rights, and may bolster other attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. As laws that restrict the rights of transgender people in the U.S. face challenges in court, the legal, public health, medical, and bioethics communities have an essential role to play both in properly framing the legal issue, as well as explaining what is truly at stake in these cases to minimize the chances of similarly harmful rulings for the transgender community moving forward.
Meet Susannah Baruch: Q&A with the Petrie-Flom Center’s New Executive Director
On June 20th, the Petrie-Flom Center welcomed Susannah Baruch on board as its new Executive Director.
Susannah comes to the Petrie-Flom Center with expertise in reproductive health law policy, genetics, and genomics, and a wealth of experience in nonprofits, academia, and government. We asked Susannah to share a bit about herself and her past work by way of introduction to Bill of Health’s readers.
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
Highlights from Petrie-Flom Center Discussion on Neuroscience and Cannabis
By Minsoo Kwon
The legalization of cannabis has raised ethical, regulatory, and scientific questions. Panelists discussed these topics during a recent webinar hosted by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. This article highlights key points made during the conversation.
Petrie-Flom Student Fellowship Now Accepting Applications
What do a MacArthur Genius award winner, several health law professors at top schools, executive directors of leading health law centers, an associate chief counsel of the FDA, and partners and associates at top health care law firms all have in common? The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship!
The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship is a competitive one-year program designed to support Harvard graduate students interested in pursuing independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.
Public Health Product Hops
By Michael S. Sinha, Edna Besic, and Melissa Mann
Members of Congress have been focused on drug pricing for the last several years, culminating recently in new drug pricing provisions within the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. One reason for our drug pricing problem is that we allow manufacturers to charge whatever the market will bear for a new therapeutic. However, as we have also seen, manufacturers often engage in anticompetitive “games” aimed at extending market exclusivity and forestalling generic competition. One of these games is product hopping.