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Profiles in Public Health Law |
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Interview
with Lindsay F. Wiley and Matthew Pierce of the Health Law and Justice
Program at American University Washington College of Law |
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Legal Tools |
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Top Stories |
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January 2013—CDC Public Health Law NewsThursday, January 17, 2013From the Public Health Law Program, Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention In this EditionAnnouncementsLegal ToolsTop StoriesBriefly Noted
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This Month's Feature Profiles in Public Health Law: Interview with Lindsay F. Wiley and Matthew Pierce of the Health Law and Justice Program at American University Washington College of LawLindsay Wiley
CDC Public Health Law News (PHLN): What was your route to the Health Law and Justice Program (HLJP) in terms of education and career choices? Wiley: When I made the move onto the law school tenure track, I sought an institution that would be supportive of my efforts to build a health law program and I've found a wonderful home for that work here at American University Washington College of Law. The law school had an existing Health Law and Policy Project, which our program built upon by adding a scholarship and research focus. Pierce: I was drawn to HLJP largely because of Lindsay's and the law school's commitment to promoting public health, civil liberties, and social justice. I became interested in how these societal goals relate to one another during law school, and my career decisions have all been guided by my desire to explore those relationships and promote these three goals. My first full-time job out of law school was as a public defender in Baltimore City, an experience that made me sensitive to how laws (even well-intentioned public health laws) can disproportionately burden already marginalized populations. As just one example, seatbelt laws have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives, but in many Baltimore neighborhoods, these laws also provide police a convenient means to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. It does not take long working as a public defender, however, to realize that defending individuals from government overreach (while extremely important) does little to change the underlying factors that cause most people to become entangled in the criminal justice system in the first place. During my last year as a public defender, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in a pilot program that sought to incorporate some public health principles into public defense by connecting clients to support services and helping them address some of the collateral consequences of their criminal records. I still believe that this is the best model for public defense, but it is still secondary prevention at the individual level, and I was interested in exploring broader level changes. I was, therefore, thrilled to have the opportunity at the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center on a couple projects that examined colleges' and employers' use of criminal histories to screen applicants. This practice, which appears to be growing, has yet to be rigorously evaluated from a public health perspective and has the potential to disproportionately burden populations with higher arrest and conviction rates. Moreover, criminal screening could be harmful to public health because it prevents prior offenders from building alternative career paths to crime. Although the projects I worked on at UNC have ended, I hope to continue to explore this line of research, and I am grateful that my position at HLJP will allow me to conduct public health law research while helping to build a broader health law program committed to promoting civil liberties and social justice. PHLN: What initially sparked your interest in public health and, more specifically, public health law? Wiley: As a law student at Harvard, I came to health law via my initial interest in disability law. I found the questions surrounding the definition of "disability" fascinating and exploring those led me to broader questions about defining illness and health that eventually led me to health law. At that time, there weren't many course offerings available, but through part-time work at the American Society for Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME), I gained exposure to a broad range of cutting edge questions in health law research and scholarship. This was just after September 11, and there was an explosion of public health law scholarship going on. I found it absolutely fascinating. I was editing articles for the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, including truly groundbreaking work by Larry Gostin, Wendy Parmet, Scott Burris, James Hodge, and others whom I am now lucky enough to count as colleagues, mentors, and friends. Pierce: I don't think there is any single event that sparked my interest in public health or public health law. Certainly, the fact that my father spent most of his career in public health played a part in my decision to pursue an M.P.H., but I think my interest in the field stems mostly from my belief that differences among populations are best explained by social and environmental variation. When we are able to compare two populations and accurately predict that one population will have significantly worse health outcomes, it is, in most cases, evidence of injustice. Working in public health law allows me to think about how to address some of those injustices. PHLN: Please describe HLJP's projects and activities. Pierce and Wiley: HLJP serves as a hub for the health law activities at our law school. We help coordinate the health law curriculum, including our LL.M. Health Law Specialization and our Health Law & Policy Summer Institute—a two-week session in which we offer ten to eleven intensive health law courses on cutting edge topics for practitioners and law students alike. We organize conferences and events on health law topics; we provide academic and career counseling for students interested in health law; and we help support the two student health law groups at the Washington College of Law: the Health Law and Policy Brief, which is the school's biannual health law publication, and the Health Law and Justice Society, which organizes symposia, career panels, and networking events for students interested in health law. HLJP also conducts public health law research. Lindsay's most recent research has focused primarily on public health legal theory, including the appropriate scope of public health law and responses to allegations of "nanny-statism." She's also working on several projects surrounding the promotion of healthy eating and physical activity and reduction of weight bias as a public health objective. Matt's main current research project involves mapping state prescription monitoring program laws over the past decade and evaluating their effect on overdose deaths from prescription opioids. PHLN: What do you see as law professors' role in the development of public health law? Pierce: I think two of the most pressing roles for public health law professors are to 1) articulate a coherent public health legal theory that courts can apply to uphold laws that promote public health and 2) convince more judges to incorporate that theory into their decisions. Professors Gostin and Parmet, among others, have made enormous contributions to step 1, but now I think public health law professors need to be thinking more about step 2. Wiley: This is an issue we're actively engaged with here at HLJP. We're hosting a meeting this week to bring together public health law professors from across the country for a discussion of our role in creating a legal environment that is more conducive to the protection and promotion of population health. Several legal doctrines with enormous importance to public health are currently in flux. We see deeply disturbing trends in the First Amendment protection of commercial speech (which put warning and disclosure requirements and other regulations at risk), preemption of local law by state law, and state law by federal law (which limits the authority of government actors with the greatest traditional responsibility for public health), and other areas as well. I'm particularly interested in the efforts of the food and beverage industry to defeat innovative interventions to address obesity-related health threats. They're using tactics straight out of the tobacco industry playbook. As law professors, we can respond to these trends by helping to reframe the exploding national debate over public health in terms of collective community action to address problems that none of us is able to combat effectively acting alone. We can guide the development of the empirical evidence basis for existing and newly developing public health law interventions. We can innovate to develop legal interventions that more successfully navigate these (ever-changing) legal constraints and new legal arguments that attempt to reverse a trend toward what we view as improper developments in the law. These are all important and valuable functions that law professors are uniquely well positioned to perform, but they are difficult for us to engage in successfully in isolation. The aim of this week's meeting is to promote greater coordination among us, and among our centers, with an eye toward more effective engagement with courts, legislatures, regulators, practitioners, and others. PHLN: Please describe your respective job duties and projects within HLJP. Pierce: As associate director, I'm responsible for many of the day-to-day activities of HLJP. I work with our LL.M. Program on Law and Government to develop our Health Law Specialization and with our adjunct faculty to develop both regular semester and summer courses. I provide academic and career counseling to J.D. and LL.M. students interested in health law. I help support the law school's two student health law organizations: the Health Law and Policy Brief and the Health Law and Justice Society. I teach as an adjunct during the summer and one of the regular semesters. And I conduct public health law research and seek funding for future research projects. Wiley: As the faculty director, I work closely with Matt to define and promote our program's strategic vision. I particularly enjoy working to shape the health law curriculum. Health law is such a broad and varied field and student interest in it is growing dramatically in response to exciting job opportunities. My primary role is as a teacher and legal scholar, but I find that my program responsibilities help keep me in touch with the rapidly developing field of health law as a whole and with trends in empirical research and grant funding in public health law in particular. PHLN: One of HLJP's primary missions is to advance the law field though research and training programs. What type of research and training programs do you offer? Pierce: I am currently overseeing two research projects at the law school: one is a collaboration with researchers at UNC that involves mapping state prescription monitoring program laws over the past decade and evaluating their effect on overdose deaths from prescription opioids. The other is a collaboration with the Children's Dental Health Project and involves the administration and expansion of the Fluoride Legislative User Information Database or "FLUID," a web-based database containing historical information on legal cases decided by U.S. courts and current information on federal and state policies regarding community water fluoridation. The Health Law and Policy Summer Institute and LL.M. Health Law Specialization are our primary media for training professionals. The Summer Institute is a great way for individuals who are considering returning to law school for an LL.M. to get a sense of the types of courses we offer, and all Summer Institute courses can be applied toward an LL.M. Health Law Specialization. The courses are also a wonderful way for health law professionals to stay up-to-date on developments in the law. We also offer conferences and events throughout the year through which professionals can earn CLE credit. PHLN: What is the Health Law Policy Institute and how does it support HLJP's public health training mission? Pierce and Wiley: The Health Law and Policy Summer Institute runs for two weeks at the end of each June and offers students and professionals the opportunity to take specialized health law and policy courses for academic or CLE credit. We are fortunate to have a dedicated summer faculty composed of leading health lawyers who blend theory and practice into their curricula so that participants gain an understanding of the high-level policy debates and of the concrete legal rules that have come out of those debates. We also organize several lunchtime events over the two weeks to give participants the chance to network outside of the classroom and to attend panel discussions on recent health law developments. This summer we plan to offer eleven courses on a variety of topics, including public health litigation, health insurance exchanges, and global health and human rights. We are also introducing two new course "clusters": one will focus on health care fraud and abuse, and the other on legal regulation of the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals. The goal of these clusters is to allow participants to dig more deeply into these two rapidly developing areas of health law. Each course will run for two full days or four evenings. Participants can choose to take just one course or to take courses throughout the full two weeks. PHLN: What upcoming HLJP projects and events do you find particularly exciting? Wiley: We're currently developing new research projects in areas relating to food labeling and obesity and we're very excited to get those off the ground over the next several months. PHLN: Considering both domestic and global public health law arenas, what essential public health law challenges and changes do you anticipate in the coming year? Pierce: Two public health law story lines that I will be watching closely this year are the response of gun control advocates to the series of mass shootings that occurred in 2012 and the response of the FDA to the D.C. Circuit's decision to invalidate its proposed graphic warning labels for cigarettes. I will be interested to see whether gun control advocates have enough momentum to make changes in gun laws . . . As a legal matter, I will be interested to see whether the D.C. Circuit's decision to invalidate the FDA's graphic warning labels is successfully challenged. Wiley: The graphic warning decision in particular has enormous ramifications for a wide range of public health issues, In addition to the issues Matt mentioned, I'm going to be watching the implementation of the New York City portion rule for sugary drinks. It's an innovative—and woefully misrepresented—intervention that I think shows significant promise. I see it as conceptually related to the ban on the inclusion of toys or other incentive items targeted at kids in meals that fail to meet minimal nutritional standards. These kinds of changes to the food environment make healthier options (like smaller soda portions or apple slices instead of fries in meals heavily marketed to preschoolers) the default. They require people to affirmatively "opt in" if they want to make less healthy choices (by buying two cups, or by paying an extra fee for the toy). PHLN: How can professionals as well as lay people learn more about HLJP and become more involved with public health law? Pierce: Anyone interested in health law can learn more about our program, our Summer Institute, or our LL.M. Health law specialization by going to our website (http://www.wcl.american.edu/health/index.cfm) or by contacting us directly. PHLN: If you were not working in public health law, what would you likely be doing? Pierce: There is a part of me that misses working as a public defender and that, at the very least, wishes I had spent a few additional years developing my criminal defense skills before turning to public health research, so perhaps I would give that career another shot. I've also always thought it would be nice to be a dog walker. Wiley: I don't know that it's "likely," but my alternative dream job would be to be a snarky TV recapper for Television Without Pity or maybe a film editor. PHLN: Please describe any personal information, hobbies, or interests you care to share. Wiley: We both have young children—Matt's a new dad and I have three kids. So we don't really have hobbies or interests at the moment. We're really quite boring, but happy. PHLN: Have you read any good books lately? Pierce: I'm proud to say that I was able to make it through Donald Crews's Freight Train in one sitting, despite the best efforts of my six-month old to eat most of the pages. Of less interest to my son, but of more interest to me, I've finally been reading Wendy Parmet's Populations, Public Health, and the Law, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who is interested in public health law. Wiley: I'm learning a lot from Benn McGrady's wonderful book, Trade and Public Health: The WTO, Tobacco, Alcohol, and Diet. PHLN: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Wiley: Perhaps there would be, but it's 5:00 and I'm going to have to run to go pick up the kids! Court Opinions
Quotation of the Month: Anita Adams, iris implant patient.About Public Health Law NewsThe CDC Public Health Law News is published the third Thursday of each month except holidays, plus special issues when warranted. It is distributed only in electronic form and is free of charge.The News is published by the CDC Public Health Law Program in the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support. Subscribe!Access past issues or subscribe to the CDC Public Health Law News. To make comments or suggestions, send an email to phlawprogram@cdc.gov.DisclaimersNews content is selected solely on the basis of newsworthiness and potential interest to readers. CDC and HHS assume no responsibility for the factual accuracy of the items presented from other sources. The selection, omission, or content of items does not imply any endorsement or other position taken by CDC or HHS. Opinions expressed by the original authors of items included in the News, or persons quoted therein, are strictly their own and are in no way meant to represent the opinion or views of CDC or HHS. References to products, trade names, publications, news sources, and non-CDC Web sites are provided solely for informational purposes and do not imply endorsement by CDC or HHS. Legal cases are presented for educational purposes only, and are not meant to represent the current state of the law. The findings and conclusions reported in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of CDC or HHS. The News is in the public domain and may be freely forwarded and reproduced without permission. The original news sources and the CDC Public Health Law News should be cited as sources. Readers should contact the cited news sources for the full text of the articles. |
viernes, 18 de enero de 2013
January 2013 issue of the Public Health Law News
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