Public Health Law And Ethics

Now revised and expanded to cover today’s most pressing health threats, Public Health Law and Ethics probes the legal and ethical issues at the heart of public health through an incisive selection of government reports, scholarly articles, and relevant court cases. Companion to the internationally acclaimed text Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, this reader can also be used as a stand-alone resource for students, practitioners, scholars,and teachers. It encompasses global issues that have changed the shape of public health in recent years including anthrax, SARS, pandemic flu, biosecurity, emergency preparedness, and the transition from infectious to chronic diseases caused by lifestyle changes in eating and physical activity. In addition to covering these new arenas, it includes discussion of classic legal and ethical tensions inherent to public health practice, such as how best to balance the police power of the state with individual autonomy.

A collection of articles and documents designed as a companion to Gostin's textbook, American Public Health Law.

"In this completely revised second edition, Gostin analyzes the major health threats of our times, from emerging infectious diseases (e.g., SARS and pandemic influenza) to bioterrorism (e.g., the deliberate release of anthrax and smallpox) to chronic diseases caused by overweight and obesity. By analyzing transnational law, Gostin shows how public health law transcends national borders in areas ranging from infectious disease and tobacco use to world trade and access to essential medicines. Public Health Law creates an intellectual framework for the modern field of public health and supports that framework with illustrations of the intellectual, scientific, political, and ethical issues involved. In proposing innovative solutions for the future of the public's health, Gostin's essential study provides a blueprint for coming public and political debates about this vital and burgeoning field."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader, 3rd Edition probes the legal and ethical issues at the heart of public health through an incisive selection of judicial opinions, scholarly articles, and government reports. Crafted to be accessible to students while thorough enough for use by practitioners, policy makers, scholars, and teachers alike, the reader can be used as a stand-alone resource or alongside the internationally acclaimed Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, 3rd Edition. This updated edition reader includes new discussions of today’s most pressing health threats, such as chronic diseases, emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, biosecurity, opioid overdose, gun violence, and health disparities.

Natural disasters and cholera outbreaks. Ebola, SARS, and concerns over pandemic flu. HIV and AIDS. E. coli outbreaks from contaminated produce and fast foods. Threats of bioterrorism. Contamination of compounded drugs. Vaccination refusals and outbreaks of preventable diseases. These are just some of the headlines from the last 30-plus years highlighting the essential roles and responsibilities of public health, all of which come with ethical issues and the responsibilities they create. Public health has achieved extraordinary successes. And yet these successes also bring with them ethical tension. Not all public health successes are equally distributed in the population; extraordinary health disparities between rich and poor still exist. The most successful public health programs sometimes rely on policies that, while improving public health conditions, also limit individual rights. Public health practitioners and policymakers face these and other questions of ethics routinely in their work, and they must navigate their sometimes competing responsibilities to the health of the public with other important societal values such as privacy, autonomy, and prevailing cultural norms. This Oxford Handbook provides a sweeping and comprehensive review of the current state of public health ethics, addressing these and numerous other questions. Taking account of the wide range of topics under the umbrella of public health and the ethical issues raised by them, this volume is organized into fifteen sections. It begins with two sections that discuss the conceptual foundations, ethical tensions, and ethical frameworks of and for public health and how public health does its work. The thirteen sections that follow examine the application of public health ethics considerations and approaches across a broad range of public health topics. While chapters are organized into topical sections, each chapter is designed to serve as a standalone contribution. The book includes 73 chapters covering many topics from varying perspectives, a recognition of the diversity of the issues that define public health ethics in the U.S. and globally. This Handbook is an authoritative and indispensable guide to the state of public health ethics today.

Public health activity, and the state’s public health responsibilities to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy, can only be achieved through different means of social coordination. This places law and regulation at the heart of public health. They are fundamental both to methods of achieving public health goals and to constraints that may be put on public health activity. As such, trainees, practitioners, and leaders in public health need to understand the breadth and nature of wide-ranging legal and regulatory approaches and the place of ethics in public health. Public Health Law, written by three leading scholars in the field, defines and examines this crucial area of study and practice. It advances an agenda whose scope extends far beyond that covered in traditional medical law and health care law texts. The authors provide an account of the scale of contemporary public health policy and practice and explain its philosophical depths and implications and its long legislative and regulatory history. They advance a definition of the field and explore how different legal approaches may serve and advance or constrain and delimit public health agendas. This ground-breaking book presents the field of public health ethics and law and goes on to examine the impact within the UK of private law, criminal law, public law, EU and international law, and ‘softer’ regulatory approaches. It is a primary point of reference for scholars, practitioners, and leaders working in public health, particularly those with an interest in law, policy, and ethics.

As it seeks to protect the health of populations, public health inevitably confronts a range of critical ethical challenges. This volume brings together 25 articles that open up the terrain of the ethics of public health. It features topics such as tobacco and drug control, and infectious disease.