Tag: COVID

Gloved hand grabs beaker with rolled currency.

Leverage COVID-19 Frameworks to Prepare for the Next Pandemic

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By Matthew Bauer

How should scientists, policy makers, and governments balance efforts to address the current pandemic with initiatives to prevent the next one?

We have seen this play out before during the 2003 SARS crisis. A burst of research funding and resources were thrown at tackling the health emergency that spread to 29 different countries. Ultimately, enormous efforts across the globe were able to halt the crisis, but as scientific research continued post-outbreak, it became difficult to sustain funding.

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Close up of a Doctor making a vaccination in the shoulder of patient.

The CMS Vaccine Mandate: The Nationwide Injunction and What It Means

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By Kaitlynn Milvert

On November 30, 2021, a federal district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction to block the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) vaccine requirements for health care workers.

This ruling comes mere days before the December 6 deadline for employees of CMS-funded facilities to receive their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and it casts uncertainty over upcoming deadlines for vaccination compliance.

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Kirkland, WA / USA - circa March 2020: Street view of the Life Care Center of Kirkland building, ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak in Kirkland.

The PREP Act and Nursing Homes’ Fight to Move COVID Claims to Federal Court

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By Kaitlynn Milvert

As nursing homes face wrongful death claims amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they increasingly have pursued a common litigation strategy: attempting to reroute state tort lawsuits to federal court.

A recent ruling in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this tactic. As the first court of appeals ruling on this issue, the decision avoids extending a federal statute limiting pandemic liability into unprecedented areas and defines at least some limits on the statute’s effect on state tort suits. Read More

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Casualties of Preparedness: Rethinking the Global Health Security Paradigm

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By Manjari Mahajan

The calls for a new pandemic treaty, like the genesis of the International Health Regulations (IHR), have been anchored within a paradigm of “global health security.” Before undertaking new projects of international lawmaking, it behooves us to examine this dominant paradigm and assess whether it actually leads to the goal of pandemic preparedness across countries. At stake are the future contours of a global normative, legal and infrastructural machinery and whether its animating logics are historically informed, evidence-driven, and geographically equitable.

The prevailing global health security paradigm was institutionalized in international law through the IHR, a policy centerpiece that was most recently revised in 2005 in response to a series of new infectious diseases including AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. At its foundation, the schema identifies the problem at hand as outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, which become global security threats as they travel across borders. The focus is very much on new and re-emerging infectious diseases, and not ongoing health-related problems in a population. Moreover, this framework is animated by a special anxiety about contagion from poorer, purportedly primordial and volatile countries in the global South to the North.

The emphases on new infections and preventing their travel from the South to the North have resulted in a politics of control and enforcement that carry with it particular normative and infrastructural demands.

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Senior citizen woman in wheelchair in a nursing home.

The Barriers to Aging in Place

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Renu Thomas and John Roth

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the risks associated with institutionalized care for the elderly, and has further shifted sentiments toward a preference for aging in place. But most seniors and their loved ones don’t realize the barriers that make aging in place a difficult proposition until a crisis occurs and they’re faced with finding services.

Take our family, for example. My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and it was after his first fall and discharge from the hospital that our family realized my parents’ independence was severely limited. We knew their house was not wheelchair or walker accessible, but we also needed to address other issues as well; neither of them could drive anymore, so how would we get them to appointments, how would their prescriptions and groceries get picked up, and how could we prevent them from being socially isolated? Like many families, we do not live nearby, let alone in the same state, which made coordinating these services even more challenging.

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Senior citizen woman in wheelchair in a nursing home.

COVID-19 and Dementia Care: Lessons for the Future

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Marie Clouqueur, Brent P. Forester, and Ipsit V. Vahia

Alongside the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S., the country faces another public health epidemic: dementia, and particularly Alzheimer’s disease.

Currently one in nine older adults in the U.S. — 6.2 million — have Alzheimer’s disease. The number of adults with Alzheimer’s in the U.S. will increase rapidly as the Baby Boomers age — it is expected to double by 2050.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation. Acute, surging demand for dementia care services will turn into a persistent problem if we do not increase our capacity for services and better support our frontline workers. We have a chance now to reflect and take action to prepare for what is coming.

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gavel on top of a pile of bills and pills

Federal Court Halts Implementation of 340B Dispute Resolution Rule

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By Sravya Chary

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana’s recent decision to grant Eli Lilly’s motion for a preliminary injunction rightfully halted the implementation of a dispute resolution rule for the 340B Drug Pricing Program.

The Alternate Dispute Resolution Final Rule (“ADR Final Rule”), issued on December 10, 2020, attempted to settle oft-occurring battles between pharmaceutical manufacturers and 340B covered entities. A few weeks later, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a 340B advisory opinion defining the department’s understanding of the statute.

The 340B Drug Pricing Program was established by Congress in 1992 with the intent to stretch federal resources to serve the nation’s most vulnerable patients. In practice, however, the program has deviated from its original intent.

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Temporary entrance in front of New York hospital during COVID-19 pandemic.

Institutional Reforms Needed to Strengthen Health Care Post-Pandemic

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Marissa Wagner Mery

COVID-19 has highlighted that pandemic preparedness and management requires a strong, well-functioning health system.

Shoring up the health system and its workforce should be a national priority post-pandemic. First and foremost, we must recognize that the greatest asset of the health system is its people, and the system must reflect this. Second, our hospital-based, competition-driven health care landscape should be reformed to better meet the needs of our communities.

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How Preclinical Medical Students Have Embraced Advocacy Amid Virtual Education

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By Tarika Srinivasan

On February 28th, 2020, after an hour of incessantly refreshing my email inbox, I received an acceptance letter to my dream medical school. That same day, a conference in the city I would soon call home became the superspreader nexus from which up to 300,000 COVID-19 infections have been traced.

The ensuing months, which were meant to be an exercise in pomp and circumstance, were marked by a steady stream of anxiety, frustration, and disappointment associated with virtual learning.

As first-year medical students, it is hard not to feel that we comprise the bottom rung of a long, rigid hierarchy. We are fully aware of the limited role we play in this pandemic; we lack the useful clinical skills of a final-year medical student or an employed resident. Our presence in the hospital is more of a liability than an asset.

We witnessed classes of fourth-years graduating early to serve on the front-lines of the spring first wave (though reception to this call of duty ranged from appreciation to apprehension). We imagined that in a few short years, we too might be deemed so “essential” that folks would be clamoring to have us serve on the wards.

But, despite our limited skills, we preclinical students decided we could not simply wait in the wings for our cue. Though we were dedicated to the didactic portion of our curriculum, we were itching to be involved in the action. Thus, we sought to expand the scope of what medical students could do during a pandemic.

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