HLS Health Law and Policy Workshop: Professor Michele Goodwin on Fetal Protection Laws: Moral Panic & The New Constitutional Battlefront

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce the continuation of this year’s Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics Workshop. We’re delighted again to welcome a stellar lineup of leading researchers and opinion-makers in fields at the intersection of health and law.  Professors Einer Elhauge and Glenn Cohen lead the 2012-13 workshop series.

The workshop’s next presenter is Bill of Health’s very own blogger: Michele Goodwin, Everett Fraser Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota School of Law (rescheduled from October 29, 2012).   She  will be presenting her paper “Fetal Protection Laws: Moral Panic & The New Constitutional Battlefront” on Monday, February 18th. A PDF of the paper is available here.

Workshops are held on selected Monday evenings, from 5-7 pm in Hauser Hall, room 105. Workshops are open to the public and copies of papers will generally be posted a week in advance on the Petrie-Flom Website.

Health Law Year in P/Review Video

If you couldn’t make it to our inaugural session on Health Law Year in P/Review, co-hosted by the Petrie-Flom Center and the New England Journal of Medicine, you’re in luck!  You can watch the video here:

https://www.law.harvard.edu/media/2013/02/01_pf.mov

Topics and speakers included:

The ACA and Health Care Reform

Contraceptives Coverage and Personhood Amendments

Immigrants’ Access to Health Care

Affirmative Action and Medical School Admissions

Gene Patenting

Tobacco and Obesity Policy and the First Amendment

Summary and Wrap Up

Closing Remarks from Dean Martha Minow

Frakes on The Impact of Medical Liability Standards on Physician Behavior

Michael Frakes, former Petrie-Flom Center Academic Fellow and current Assistant Professor at Cornell Law School, has an interesting new article out in the American Economic Review:

The Impact of Medical Liability Standards on Regional Variations in Physician Behavior: Evidence from the Adoption of National-Standard Rules

Abstract: I explore the association between regional variations in physician behavior and the geographical scope of malpractice standards of care. I estimate a 30-50 percent reduction in the gap between state and national utilization rates of various treatments and diagnostic procedures following the adoption of a rule requiring physicians to follow national, as opposed to local, standards. These findings suggest that standardization in malpractice law may lead to greater standardization in practices and, more generally, that physicians may indeed adhere to specific liability standards. In connection with the estimated convergence in practices, I observe no associated changes in patient health.

Petrie-Flom Center to Work with NFL Players Association

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce our involvement with the new “Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members.”  The Program will be created through a $100 million grant to Harvard Medical School from the National Football League Players Association in order to launch a transformative 10-year initiative.  The Petrie-Flom Center will work to address the critical ethical, legal, and policy issues relevant to the health of current, future, and retired players.

Read more from Harvard Law School:

Petrie-Flom Center will participate with HMS and University partners in 10-year project with NFL Players Association

[HLS Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, faculty co-director of the Center and] one of this year’s Fellows of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, will be a co-investigator on the 10-year project along with Holly Fernandez Lynch, the Center’s executive director.

The project, which will be known as the Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members, was announced on Jan. 28 by Harvard Medical School and the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA).

“Holly and I will be assuming leadership over one of the six aims of the project, the one that will address the ethical, legal and policy issues relevant to the health and health care of current future, and retired players,” said Cohen. “We will begin the 10-year project by conducting ‘listening tours’ in collaboration with the NFLPA, where we will get current and retired NFL players and their families to help us shape the agenda for our legal and ethical analysis. We will also be involving our students and colleagues at HLS and across the university in trying to wrestle with some of the thorniest legal and ethical issues involved, including: the appropriate role of players and teams in the management and employment and accreditation of team doctors and other medical staff, the privacy of players’ medical information and the ethical development of testing for injury, and liability and compensation for injured players. I feel privileged that the players will be entrusting us and the rest of the team with this vital responsibility.”

Cohen and Lynch will also serve as ethics consultants for the entire project, to help ensure that the clinical research is performed according to the appropriate ethical standards.

Said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow: “I am delighted and proud that the Petrie-Flom Center will be working with Harvard Medical School and others across the University on this extraordinary and much-needed project, and I am confident that together they will do something important for football, its players, and the country.”

For more information, see these selected news articles announcing the partnership: