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Public Health Law, Ethics, and Policy: Cases and Materials
This pioneering book offers the most comprehensive and teachable compilation of materials on public health law now available. The updated 2nd edition provides significant new materials on the unprecedented challenges for courts and government policymakers presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its unique perspective highlights the evolving legal, political and social responses to the current infectious disease outbreak—in the context of earlier court cases and policies dating back to cholera in the 1900s through SARS and Ebola in this century.
The 2nd edition also features the emergence of health equity as a key public health perspective, as increasingly detailed data document the differential impact of upstream social and environmental determinants on the health of the public and on the health of particular populations. Other updates focus on “system-approaches” to complex health problems, such as opioid misuse and obesity, that require data, engagement and coordination across numerous government entities.
One of the challenges of teaching public health law is that it touches many other government sectors and bodies of law. This book solves that problem by organizing and integrating the material to address (1) cross-cutting themes in public health policy, such as government authority and justification to restrict individual liberties or use emergency powers and (2) the primary policy tools used by public health policymakers and practitioners, from behavioral interventions such as immunization and quarantine to environmental regulations. The book aims to explore topics from different points of view, weaving together public health sciences, ethics, law, and public policy.
In perhaps their most exciting innovation, Bonnie, Bernheim and Matthews have constructed an intriguing and diverse menu of teachable units focused on specific policy problems or case studies in public health action. The book weaves together pertinent medical information and public health statistics, court decisions and other legal materials, and ethics commentaries. It uses both judicial opinions and concrete problems in public health policy and practice as the main vehicles for classroom discussion. Examples include leading a community response to COVID-19 that addresses health disparities, differential social and economic need, vaccine allocation and resistance; and preparing public health testimony for a state legislature on immunization requirements or exemptions. Other case studies include substandard housing as a determinant of health, and the upstream effects of climate change on the health of children. Students are also exposed to a variety of cross-cutting regulatory frameworks, including product safety, environmental protection, and data privacy.
This book is richly interdisciplinary. Although designed for students of law, the book can easily be adapted to courses designed for students in public health, public policy and interprofessional settings examining the role of law and public policy in advancing population health and health equity.
Imprint: Foundation Press
Series: University Casebook Series
Publication Date: 05/13/2021
Related Subject(s): Health-Survey
Richard J. Bonnie, University of Virginia School of Law
Ruth Gaare Bernheim, University of Virginia School of Law
Dayna Bowen Matthew, George Washington University Law School
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The second edition of Public Health Law, Ethics, and Policy: Cases and Materials by Professors Bonnie, Bernheim and Matthew builds on the conceptual and pedagogical innovations of the first edition of this path-breaking interdisciplinary casebook. This message highlights the additions to the first edition, including rich case studies on COVID-19, opioids, climate change, inequity, and other huge ethical challenges that contemporary public health officials must confront.
Chapter 1: Perspectives of Public Health. This important introductory chapter has been totally revised. It includes new, expanded material that integrates perspectives of public health law, ethics and policy. Importantly, it provides an overview of Health Equity as a significant perspective in public health, including health equity goals and such strategies as health impact assessments and health in all policies (HiAP) and of the health justice approach to using law to reduce health disparities. The chapter also includes expanded material on obesity with a consideration of health equity and the NYC Soda Cap Rule.
Chapter 2: Determinants of Health. This reorganized chapter includes broadened material on the determinants of health; a new focus on socioeconomic disparities with housing as a determinant of health; updated findings from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; the integration of new law cases on housing, climate change; and new case studies, including a COVID-19 community health equity case study and a significant case study about opioids and the determinants of health.
Chapter 3: Containing Infectious Disease. This chapter combines the material on infectious disease control that appeared in Chapter 1 in the first edition with a major new section on COVID-19, including case law and legal commentary in about 100 new pages. The legal/policy responses to the current pandemic are considered in context of earlier court cases and policies dating back to cholera in the 1900s through SARS and Ebola in this century. The COVID-19 section examines federal power to quarantine; emergency powers; judicial review of emergency restrictions including two court rulings; the allocation of scarce resources, including vaccine allocation and considerations of health equity; and ethical dimensions of encouraging vaccine uptake.
Chapter 4: Constitutional Structure. This chapter provides an efficient, conceptual approach to government authority and responsibility in public health, and the challenge of federalism, integrating court cases from two chapters in the previous edition with new legal material on the Flint Water Crises.
Chapter 5: The Paternalism Constraint. This edition updates previous edition with new data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to inform the case study of mandatory helmet laws and motorcycle risk and injury.
Chapter 6: The Significance of Community Values. This chapter substantially overhauls the chapter from the previous edition in its examination of the impact of community values on public health policy. It streamlines and updates material on the case study of Preventing Teenage Pregnancy case study including the latest data on teen pregnancy and the 2030 Healthy People goals and a consideration of the latest state laws and legal challenges on STI/HIV education. Other updated and new material highlights the challenge of harm reduction strategies, featuring a new case study on “reducing harm from injection drug use” that provides an overview of a variety of legal and policy strategies such as state laws that regulate the sale of or access to drug paraphernalia and a new section on “Safe Consumption Facilities,” featuring a class scenario for discussion.
Chapter 7: Surveillance. This updated chapter includes the 2020 revised list of the 10 Essential Public Health Services; updated material on surveillance and reporting that features information about case-based surveillance for COVID-19. A major new section explores the intersection of genomics, big data and public health, including material on COVID-19, genomics and ethical questions on COVID-19 management decisions.
Chapter 8: Immunization. This chapter on Immunization includes new material on the 2019 Brooklyn Measles Outbreak in which New York City declared a public health emergency that allowed the city to ignore religious exemptions and that eventually led to a revision of state law.
Chapter 9: Mandated Testing and Treatment. This edition consolidates into one chapter material that appeared in two chapters in the first edition, using HIV (mandated testing) and TB (mandated treatment), respectively, as case studies. It also provides updated notes and questions on current challenges, such as the final study problem addressing tuberculosis among persons experiencing homelessness, which raises questions of coercion and equity.
Chapter 10: Health Communication and Social Marketing. Although the material in this chapter is largely unchanged, we have added Cipollone to highlight the preemptive effect of federal labeling and warning requirements on state regulatory authority.
Chapter 11: Regulation of Labeling and Advertising. This chapter has been updated to include important First Amendment rulings on federal tobacco warnings rendered since publication of the first edition.
Chapter 12: Regulating Consumer Products. This chapter includes an entirely new section on regulation of “e-cigarettes.”
Chapter 13: Assuring Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods. This chapter is largely unchanged aside from regulatory updating.
Learn more about this series.
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