JOURNAL OF LAW MEDICINE & ETHICS

Imagination, Hope, and Joy: Building Resilience through Trauma-Informed Teaching and Self-Care in Anti-Racist Clinics
Scott C and Cole A
Teaching students to build resilience is necessary to keep imagining and fighting for a path towards social justice. To do so, clinicians can draw from the communities facing oppression and examine how they remain resilient despite oppression.
Challenges of Uncertainty in Prenatal Decision-Making: Skeletal Dysplasias
Ramji N, Robinson ME and Moore GP
When skeletal dysplasias are suspected in the prenatal period, investigation, counseling, and management become especially challenging. By better understanding the complex forces at play and parental values, prenatal health care providers may improve the ways in which they counsel patients to improve the decision-making process under conditions of significant uncertainty, including in cases of prenatally suspected skeletal dysplasia.
A Proposed Research Agenda for Ethical, Legal, Social, and Historical Studies at the Intersection of Infectious and Genetic Disease
Cholette F and McLaren PJ
Over the past two decades there has been a rapid expansion in our understanding of how human genetic variability impacts susceptibility and severity of disease. Through applications of genome-wide association studies, genome and exome sequencing, researchers have made thousands of discoveries of genetic variants that impact risk of common and rare disorders affecting millions of people. Although these techniques have been primarily applied to highly prevalent chronic disorders such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases have proven to not be immune to genome-wide association, with studies of Tuberculosis, HIV and SARS-CoV2, to name but a few, identifying host susceptibility loci across the genome. Unlike non-communicable diseases, infectious diseases have the unique element of impacting not only the affected the host, but those who may be most vulnerable to acquiring the infection. Thus, genetic variants that impact one individual's susceptibility to and severity of an infection may also have broader implications to public health, as was brought into keen focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, as we begin to apply the knowledge gained from genomic studies in the clinic or into policy, there are unique ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) at the intersection of infectious diseases and human genomics. In this issue of the , Jose et al attempt to address this need by proposing a research agenda for ELSI studies at what they term the "blurred boundaries" of infectious and genetic diseases..
Vaccine Procurement: The Changes Needed to Close Access Gaps and Achieve Health Equity in Routine and Pandemic Settings
Harmon SHE, Kholina K and Graham JE
Vaccines are not the only public health tool, but they are critical in routine and emergency settings. Achieving optimal vaccination rates requires timely access to vaccines. However, we have persistently failed to secure, distribute, and administer vaccines in a timely, effective, and equitable manner despite an enduring rhetoric of global health equity.
Reimagining Vaccine Access for Health Equity
Harrison EA
The Covid-19 pandemic elevated global attention to the complex problem of allocating and disseminating newly approved vaccines. Following early calls for vaccine equity, global health leaders made progress but struggled to fully realize distribution goals. With respect to vaccination rates, low and middle income countries have not achieved full parity with high income countries. In this issue, Harmon, Kholina, and Graham follow longstanding critiques of market-based vaccine procurement to propose "legal and practical solutions for realizing a new access to vaccines environment" that will, they suggest, further the goal of global health justice.
Medical-Legal Partnership Education Impacts Resident Physician Competencies Relating to Social Drivers of Health
Swallow MA, Kala S, O'Malley S, Rosenthal A and Fenick AM
Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) support patients and clinicians by streamlining legal and medical care and helping identify and address a subset of social drivers of health (SDOH). Less is known on the effect of MLPs on the competency of residents regarding SDOH. The aim of this study was to identify how integration of an MLP into a pediatric residency training program affected residents' experience understanding and addressing SDOH.
Teaching Grassroots Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Service and Collaborative Learning
Watson SD
This column describes the history, mission, and work of Saint Louis University School of Law's service-learning course Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Grassroots Advocacy. Grassroots Advocacy allows law students to work with advocacy organizations on state and federal health policy initiatives, engaging in legislative and administrative advocacy and public education. The course uses community collaboration, community-led advocacy, and collaborative learning to train the next generation of health policy advocates for Missouri and the nation.
Charity Scott: Teacher, Mentor, Collaborator, Interdisciplinarian
Caley SB and Bliss LR
Charity Scott brought health law to Georgia State College of Law in the fall of 1987. Through her faculty appointment, along with her boundless energy and intellectual curiosity, she set herself on an odyssey. She began by teaching a single general health law class. This beginning led to the development of a full curriculum in the field, complete with experiential learning opportunities and a certificate in health law program. In addition to creating learning and career opportunities in health law for law students, her development of the Center for Health, Law and Society created academic opportunities for leading health law faculty.
Strategy, Morality, Courage: Bioethics and Health Law after
King NMP, Coughlin CN and Levine BJ
Our paper examines what is required to protect and promote effective public discussion and policy development in the current climate of divisive disagreement about many public policy questions. We use abortion as a case example precisely because it is morally fraught. We first consider the changes made by , as well as those which led up to the decision, accompany it, and follow from it.
Ethical and Legal Issues in COVID-19 Case Investigation and Contact Tracing: A Case Study of A Large Academic Public Health Partnership
White LC, Meyer LG and Jehn M
In an effort to respond to the large surge in COVID-19 cases in Arizona that began between May and July 2020, the Arizona State University (ASU) Student Outbreak Response Team (SORT) formed a remote, volunteer-based case investigation team that worked in partnership with a local public health department through delegated public health authority.
A Tribute to Professor Charity Scott: Imagination, Reflection, and the Jay Healey Teaching Plenary
Watson SD
Georgia State University College of Law Professor Emerita Charity Scott quoted these words from Albert Einstein in June of 2022 as she concluded a tribute to Professor Joseph (Jay) M. Healey, one of the founding lights of health law and health law teaching. She chose the quote because she thought the words and sentiment would resonate with Jay. I repeat it because Dr. Einstein's words capture the essence and heart of Charity's approach to teaching, pedagogy, and life. Charity modeled, urged, nudged, and taught the community of health law professors to embrace imagination and creativity. Charity's vision has helped us be more creative and reflective teachers..
Charity Scott - A Masterful Teacher
Hoffmann DE
In 2006, the University of Maryland Carey School of Law had the privilege of co-hosting the annual Health Law Professors Conference with the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME). Coincidentally, as director of the Law & Health Care Program at Maryland, I had the opportunity to announce the winner of the Jay Healey Health Law Teachers' Award at the conference. The award is given to "professors who have devoted a significant portion of their career to health law teaching and whose selection would honor Jay [Healey's] legacy through their passion for teaching health law, their mentoring of students and/or other faculty and by their being an inspiration to colleagues and students." Healey, a Professor in the Humanities Department at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, was the youngest recipient of the Society's Health Law Teachers' Award, which he received in 1990. He was passionate about teaching and had the idea to devote a session each year at the annual conference to teaching health law. It was always a plenary session at which he challenged us to be better teachers. Jay died in 1993, at the age of 46, not long after the Health Law Teachers conference that year, which he attended and which also happened to be held in Baltimore at the University of Maryland School of Law. Thereafter, the award was given in his name.
The Role of the Lawyer as Deal Maker in Health Care Acquisitions: From Amoral to Immoral?
Furrow BR
This article proposes ethical - and legal - accountability for lawyers representing clients such as private equity (PE) firms who create ownership structures for nursing home systems. Using PE ownership as a case study, I will show that nursing home residents are often harmed and Medicaid costs inflated. I propose private law provides tools to compel such accountability, through (1) aiding and abetting doctrines and (2) fiduciary doctrines that require that the fiduciary be responsible for its vulnerable beneficiaries, not just ethically but for damages and equitable relief. I further propose that the teaching of Professional Responsibility needs to be changed to force law students to consider the effect of legal practice on third parties in situations like health care financing.
Charity's Neighborhoods
Crossley MA
This tribute compares Charity Scott to Fred Rogers, highlighting how Charity nurtured health law colleagues' unique gifts and built community. Continuing the neighborhood theme, it highlights encouraging developments relating to health, housing, and place: Medicaid housing supports and potential reparations for redlining-related health inequities.
Supreme Court Impacts in Public Health Law: 2023-2024
Hodge JG, Piatt JL, White EN, Barraza LF and Berthiaume KM
In a "mixed bag" 2023-2024 session, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of decisions both favorable and antithetical to public health and safety. Taking on tough constitutional issues implicating gun control, misinformation, and homelessness, the Court also avoided substantive reviews in favor of procedural dismissals in key cases involving reproductive rights and government censorship.
Health Law and Bigotry Distractions
Aaron DG and Francis LP
Bigotry distractions are strategic invocations of racism, transphobia, or negative stigma toward other marginalized groups to shape political discourse. Although the vast majority of Americans agree on large policy issues ranging from reducing air pollution to prosecuting corporate crime, bigotry distractions divert attention from areas of agreement toward divisive identity issues. This article explores how the nefarious targeting of identity groups through bigotry distractions may be the tallest barrier to health reform, and social change more broadly. The discussion extends the literature on dog whistles, strategic racism, and scapegoating.
Comparative Analysis of Drug Shortages in the US and Germany (2016 - 2023)
Nussli E, Serra-Burriel M and Vokinger KN
This article analyzes trends in drug shortages in the US and Germany, the largest pharmaceutical market in Europe, between 2016 and 2023. It assesses the commonalities and differences between the countries in terms of active substances in shortage, time duration in shortage, and cyclic trends.
We Have All the Time in the World: The Law and Ethics of Time-Limited Interventions in Clinical Care
Johnson SR and Sivertsen E
The authors consider the legal and ethical considerations of offering a time-limited trial of a potentially non-beneficial intervention in the setting of patient or surrogate requests to pursue aggressive treatment. The likelihood of an intervention's success is rarely a zero-sum game, and an intervention's risk-to-benefit ratio may be indiscernible without further information (often, a matter of time).
The States' Hodgepodge of Physician Licensure Regulations
Sklar T and Robertson C
The end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) on May 11, 2023, marked a pivotal shift in the landscape of telehealth regulation in the US. Kwan, Jolin, and Shachar analyze the implications of this transition by exposing inconsistencies in access to care. We agree that we now face a "convoluted patchwork of permanent and temporary changes to telehealth law and policy.".
Medical-Legal Partnerships and Legal Regimes: A Health Justice Perspective
Bhatnagar P
Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) attempt to integrate the social determinants of health into health care delivery to eliminate health inequities. Yet, MLPs have not fully adapted to identify and address structural racism, one of the root causes of health inequities. This article provides a health justice perspective on the role of MLPs to challenge legal regimes to address structural racism and reimagine systems rooted in joy, safety, and collective liberation.
The Definition of Charity
Hughes R
Few people in my memory have a name that more appropriately defines the life they have lived. "Charitable purpose" as defined in O.C.G.A. § 43-17-2 includes any charitable or benevolent purpose including health, education, or social welfare. Anyone who knew Charity Scott knows that she lived a life devoted to providing and improving the health of her community, the education of law students about health law and its use to improve the health of her community, and social welfare by addressing the socio-economic determinants of health. If she had not been assigned that name at birth, those of us who knew her could have easily assigned Charity as a nickname.