Tag: Health Law Workshop

Bill of Health - Globe and vaccine, covid vaccine

Promoting Vaccine Equity

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Ana Santos Rutschman

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief longstanding equity problems surrounding the allocation of newly developed vaccines against emerging pathogens.

In my upcoming book, Vaccines as Technology: Innovation, Barriers, and the Public Health, I examine these problems and look into possible solutions to incrementally build more equitable frameworks of access to vaccines targeting emerging pathogens. These solutions focus on ensuring that vaccines are made available affordably to the populations that need them the most according to public health parameters.

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Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

Toward a Broader Telehealth Licensing Scheme

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Fazal Khan

Evidence generated during the first year the COVID-19 pandemic has called into question the need for many of the telehealth restrictions that were in effect prior to the pandemic.

The question many policymakers are asking now is: which of the telehealth regulatory waivers enacted during the pandemic should become permanent?

My forthcoming article proposes that the federal government use its spending power to incentivize states to adopt a de facto national telehealth licensing scheme through state-based mutual recognition of licensing and scope of practice reforms through a Medicaid program funding “bonus.”

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UN United Nations general assembly building with world flags flying in front - First Avenue, New York City, NY, USA

Legal Capacity and Persons with Disabilities’ Struggle to Reclaim Control over Their Lives

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Health Law, Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts. Though the Workshop is typically open to the public, it is not currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of our presenters will contribute blog posts summarizing their work, which we are happy to share here on Bill of Health.

By Matthew S. Smith & Michael Ashley Stein

Persons with disabilities face an ongoing struggle to reclaim power and control over their lives.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is an important tool in this struggle.

In mental health care settings, the CRPD has challenged states and practitioners to reject coercive forms of care orchestrated by substitute decision-makers — be they clinicians, family members, or court appointees — in favor of modalities that preserve and privilege individuals’ direct control over their care.

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abortion protest outside supreme court.

Pregnancy Loss, Abortion Rights, and a Holistic Reproductive Justice Movement

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Health Law, Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts. Though the Workshop is typically open to the public, it is not currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of our presenters will contribute blog posts summarizing their work, which we are happy to share here on Bill of Health.

By Greer Donley and Jill Wieber Lens

In the summer of 2020, celebrity Chrissy Teigen shared her son’s stillbirth with her tens of millions of followers on social media, including photos of her agony at her son’s simultaneous birth and death.

Teigen and her husband, John Legend, are noted supporters of abortion rights. After Jack’s death, Planned Parenthood tweeted its condolences: “We’re so sorry to hear that Chrissy Teigen and John Legend lost their son, and we admire them for sharing their story.”

Backlash was swift, accusing both Teigen and Planned Parenthood of hypocrisy, questioning how one could believe abortion involves only a “clump of cells,” yet grieve a pregnancy loss.

This anecdote perfectly highlights the perceived conflict between pregnancy loss and abortion rights — that any recognition of loss in the context of stillbirth or miscarriage could cause a slippery slope to fetal personhood.

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Los Angeles, California, United States. June 23, 2021: #FreeBritney rally at LA Downtown Grand Park during a conservatorship hearing for Britney Spears.

There’s More to Decision-Making Capacity than Cognitive Function

James Toomey Leave a comment

The Health Law, Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts. Though the Workshop is typically open to the public, it is not currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of our presenters will contribute blog posts summarizing their work, which we are happy to share here on Bill of Health.

By James Toomey

The doctrine of capacity is a mess.

From Britney Spears’s high-profile struggles to establish her own capacity to the countless, quiet challenges of so many older adults, the doctrine of capacity, which requires people to have the cognitive functioning to understand the nature and consequences of a decision in order for it to be recognized in law, is vague, normatively and medically challenging, and inconsistently applied.

This is a big deal — at stake in every capacity case is whether, on the one hand, an individual may access the legal rights most of us take for granted, to enter into contracts, buy or transfer property, or get married or divorced; or, on the other, whether the legal system will ratify a decision the “real person” never would have made.

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HLS Health Law Workshop with Leemore Dafny

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HLS Health Law Workshop: Leemore Dafny

November 10, 2014 5:00 PM
Griswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)
1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.]

Download the paper: “More Insurers Lower Premiums: Evidence from Initial Pricing in the Health Insurance Marketplaces” (co-authors, Jonathan Gruber and Christopher Ody)

Leemore Dafny is a Professor of Management and Strategy and the Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Her research examines competitive interactions among payers and providers of healthcare services, and the intersection of industry and public policy. Dafny’s work has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review and the New England Journal of Medicine, and featured in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post.

Current projects include studies of consolidation in the U.S. hospital industry and the kidney dialysis industry, organizational form of provider practices, copayment coupons for prescription drugs, and the implications of for-profit ownership of insurance companies.

9/22/14: HLS Health Law Workshop with Thomas McGuire

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HLS Health Law Workshop: Thomas McGuire
September 22, 2014 5:00 PM
Griswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)
1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.]

Download the Paper: Do ‘Reverse Payment’ Settlements of Brand-Generic Patent Disputes in the Pharmaceutical Industry Constitute an Anticompetitve Pay for Delay?

Thomas G. McGuire, PhD, is a professor of health economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health care disparities, and the economics of mental health policy. Dr. McGuire has contributed to the theory of physician, hospital, and health plan payment. His research on health care disparities includes developing approaches to defining and measuring disparities, and study of the theory and measurement of provider discrimination. For more than 30 years, Dr. McGuire has conducted academic and policy research on the economics of mental health.