Tag: New York City

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 05: Emergency medical technician wearing protective gown and facial mask amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 5, 2020 in New York City.

Don’t Call Me a Hero: How to Meaningfully Support Health Care Workers

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Molly Levene

“Heroes Work Here.”

Sometimes those three short words make me angry; other times they make me cry.

I was one among thousands of EMTs and paramedics who were deployed to New York through FEMA last year. Having studied public health in school and worked in EMS for over a year, I thought I had seen the extent to which we fail patients; I believed myself disillusioned enough to be prepared for any injustice or chaos I might encounter.

But last April, I quickly learned I was wrong. And when you feel complicit in such deep structural dysfunction, it is incredibly difficult to feel heroic.

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Hands close-up of surgeons holding medical instruments.

COVID-19 and Organ Transplantation

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By James W. Lytle

After a banner year for organ transplantation in the United States in 2019, the success became a tattered memory by April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit major cities in the U.S. with its full fury.

A record number of 39,178 organs were donated in 2019, including 7,397 organs from living donors, also an all-time high.  After several years of adverse media and regulatory scrutiny, LiveOn NY, the organ procurement organization (OPO) that serves the Metropolitan New York City region, proudly reported that a total of 938 organs had been transplanted in 2019, another record that represented more than a fifty percent increase over the transplant total in 2015.

By late April 2020, however, organ transplantation activity in New York State had reportedly declined by ninety percent.

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woman with iv in her hand in hospital. Labor and delivery preparation. Intravenious therapy infusion. shallow depth of field. selective focus

The Ethical Argument Against Allowing Birth Partners in All New York Hospitals

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Louise P. King and Neel Shah

Among pregnant people and those who love them, the past few weeks have been especially confusing and anxiety-provoking.

As the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City hospitals temporarily restricted pregnant people from having a birth partner present during labor, a move that stoked international outcry and a vocal community response. Following a Change.org petition that rapidly amassed more than 600,000 protesting signatures, Governor Cuomo responded with an executive order, stating via a spokesperson, “[i]n no hospital in New York will a woman be forced to be alone when she gives birth. Not now, not ever.”

Both of us are obstetrician/gynecologists who have dedicated our careers to supporting the reproductive health and rights of those we are entrusted to care for. We are trained in health law policy and bioethics. And while we support the strong show of support for laboring women and their rights, we believe the Governor’s decision to mandate all New York hospitals allow birth partners — irrespective of the local case rate of COVID-19 or hospital capacity to test for infection or protect health care workers — is uninformed and unethical.

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How the New York Court of Appeals Applied the Soda Cap Criteria to Vaccines

Dorit Reiss Leave a comment

By Dorit Reiss

New York’s Court of Appeals reversed an Appellate Division decision and reinstated New York City’s influenza mandate for city daycares in Garcia v. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in June. Applying the same criteria the court used in 2014 to overturn the city’s controversial Soda Cap, the court found that the rules are well within the Board’s authority.

We can suspect that the recent influenza season influenced the decision, but it was also based on a more explicit delegation of authority, and a history of vaccination programs by the Board.

Also, it’s likely good news for at least some of New York’s youngest, who will be better protected from a dangerous disease, and for the public.

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How About a Clean-Air Shave?

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

By Scott Burris

Somewhere along the way, environmental law and public health law got separated.  Despite the importance of clean air and water to public health – not to mention parks, recreation, salubrious zoning – the two fields developed independently in the law. That’s changing in a lot of ways, and one very good example is a study proceeding now in New York City.

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