Greetings from the Center Directors The year 2020 has brought with it many challenges, including a global pandemic that has exacerbated health and justice inequities we have seen for decades. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to emphasize the need for sound and evidence-based health and public health laws and policies that serve the greater good, and help position our communities and our nation for success. We are proud of how our Northeastern Law health law community has stepped up to bring attention to these important matters, providing practical and long-lasting recommendations for much-needed public health reform. We invite you to read more about these efforts below. We are also happy to announce that the Health Law Professors Conference has been rescheduled for June 9-11, 2021. We are looking forward to hosting that event next summer. Please keep an eye out for additional details in the coming months.

Wendy E. Parmet Faculty Director

Jennifer Lea Huer Managing Director

About the Center for Health Policy and Law

Based in Northeastern University School of Law, the Center for Health Policy and Law draws from participating departments across Northeastern University to provide a rich context for students and researchers interested in public health law, health and human rights, health governance, intellectual property, bioethics, health care delivery law and the regulation of our health care system. It is guided by faculty and staff with diverse areas of expertise and is affiliated with an array of university-wide institutes, programs and experiential learning opportunities.

Conferences and Events

Fall 2020 Health Law Roundtables September 30 Dr. Michael Sinha Visiting Scholar, Northeastern University School of Law Regulatory Science Fellow, Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science, Harvard Program in Therapeutic Science (HiTS), Harvard Medical School October 28 Kimani Paul-Emile Professor of Law Associate Director and Head of Domestic Programs and Initiatives, Center on Race, Law & Justice Faculty Co-Director, Stein Center for Law & Ethics, Fordham University School of Law November 18 Dr. Mason Marks Assistant Professor of Law, Gonzaga University School of Law Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School Fellow-in-Residence, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School

COVID-19: Law and Social Justice Community Conversations  This fall, the Center for Health Policy and Law is hosting a virtual series of community conversations that explore COVID-19’s impact on a variety of health and human rights issues. Each week, the conversation focuses on an important issue regarding COVID-19. Topics range from healthcare worker safety, racial justice and elections, to potential concerns with equitable access to vaccines. Visit our event webpage to see the full schedule and request access to the virtual sessions.

ANNUAL LECTURE IN HEALTH POLICY AND LAW Civil Rights During a Pandemic: Privacy, Protest and Racial Justice Friday, November 6, 2020 | 12:00 - 1:30 PM EST Join us for our 2020 Lecture in Health Policy and Law, featuring Esha Bhandari, Senior Staff Attorney for the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at the ACLU. This year’s lecture is virtual and open to all!

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ANNUAL HEALTH LAW CONFERENCE

Health law scholars have been energetically engaged in identifying and responding to the myriad challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Equity, access, surveillance, privacy, quarantine, vaccine development, rationing and related issues of public health and private rights have come to the fore as matters of critical concern. In addition, and related to these issues, is the critical question of democratic governance. Inextricably interrelated to the current public health crisis, the crisis of governance presents a host of issues to be examined.

CALL FOR PAPERS As part of its annual health law conference, the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law seeks abstracts for papers that address the intertwined challenges to democracy and public health. Read the full call for papers. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to present at the virtual conference on Friday, April 16, 2021, and publish their papers in the Northeastern University Law Review. Please email lawhealth@northeastern.edu with 2021 “Call for Papers” in the subject line.

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW SYMPOSIUM The Many Faces of Health  Friday, March 19, 2021 | 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM EST

Northeastern University Law Review will host a virtual symposium focused on the many aspects of public health that are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Topics range from the debate about the purpose, function and efficacy of prisons, prison reform and prisoner health amidst the pandemic, to racism being recognized as a public health crisis, to the current and future issues of access to potential vaccines and treatments, to the labor and employment issues that have always existed on a local and national level, but have been exacerbated due to this global pandemic.  Co-sponsored by the School of Law's Center for Health Policy and Law, Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration and Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity.

Northeastern University School of Law, is thrilled to host the 44th Annual Health Law Professors Conference, in collaboration with the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME), on June 9-11, 2021. Stay tuned for more details!

Center Updates

Pandemic Policymaking: Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19

As the nation continues to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Northeastern University School of Law is proud to announce that Professors Wendy E. Parmet, Leo Beletsky and Patricia Williams; Visiting Scholar Michael Sinha; and Jessica Bresler ’20 are among 50 national experts convened to assess the US policy response to the crisis to date in a Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19 report. Read the full report here.  This new report offers policy recommendations on 35 wide-ranging topics, from pandemic preparedness and healthcare to conducting sound elections and adapting immigration policy. Designed to advise leaders at the federal, state and local level, the report presents a timely examination of policy challenges and opportunities in light of the pandemic. Sponsored by the de Beaumont Foundation and the American Public Health Association, the report was produced by Public Health Law Watch in cooperation with the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University Beasley School of Law, the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University, Wayne State University Law School, the Hall Center for Law and Health at IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law, the Network for Public Health Law and ChangeLab Solutions.

Salus Populi: Educating the Judiciary about the Social Determinants of Health

The Center for Health Policy and Law, in collaboration with the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, received a $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch “Salus Populi: Educating the Judiciary About the Social Determinants of Health.” The judicial education program will emphasize the importance of the judiciary’s role in rendering decisions that influence social determinants of health, thereby improving health equity and population health over time. This month, Salus Populi convened a meeting with its advisory board of federal and state judges, public health experts and scholars, to present its research and discuss the next phase of the project.

COVID-19 Law and Policy Briefings

This summer, Public Health Law Watch hosted a series of COVID Law and Policy Briefings, co-sponsored by the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University Beasley School of Law, the Network for Public Health Law, and the APHA Law Section. The briefings featured public health law experts from around the country who discussed the biggest legal issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The briefings will return soon! Previous briefings can be viewed on the Public Health Law Watch YouTube channel.

2020 Public Health Law Virtual Summit: COVID-19 Response and Recovery   On September 16-17, 2020, the Network for Public Health Law joined with public health law partners to host the 2020 Public Health Law Virtual Summit: COVID-19 Response and Recovery, which included several panels that explored the findings and recommendations presented in the Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19. The report includes critical analyses and recommendations from experts assessing the US policy response to the global crisis.  The following Northeastern Law faculty presented at the Summit: Patricia Williams - “The Endless Looping of Public Health and Scientific Racism”  Leo Beletsky - “COVID-19, Incarceration and the Criminal Legal System” Wendy E. Parmet - “Immigration Law’s Adverse Impact on COVID-19” Michael Sinha - “State and Local Responses to PPE Shortages” 

Faculty Updates

Brook Baker was recently appointed to the Research Advisory Committee of Knowledge Commune (South Korea).

Leo Beletsky and his team at the Health in Justice Action Lab have developed a comprehensive COVID-19 response that includes tracking changes in public policy and practices among police departments in response to the pandemic.

Claudia Haupt was named to the board of the Younger Comparativists Committee at the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL), the leading organization in the US promoting the comparative study of law.

In an effort to address growing concerns about domestic violence during the pandemic, Margo Lindauer teamed up with the NuLawLab to create the COVID Rapid Response Project.

Over the past several months, national and international media looked to Wendy E. Parmet for expert comments on COVID-19 outbreak. Since last spring, Parmet has served as the reporter for a study committee of the Uniform Law Commission looking at public health emergency laws.

Michael Sinha serves as the regulatory lead for the Greater Boston Pandemic Fabrication Team, a multidisciplinary group of researchers and academics from Harvard Medical School and MIT, formed in mid-March 2020 and focused on fabricating alternative PPE in response to local shortages at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and other institutions in Boston.

Richard Wamai took part in AIDS 2020: Virtual, the 23rd International AIDS Conference held this past July. The Journal of the International AIDS Society published a special issue related to the conference and Professor Wamai's article was one of the pieces chosen for inclusion.

Selected Faculty and Staff Publications

Aziza Ahmed  Mary Jo Frug's Women and the Law, Foundation Press, 5th ed. (forthcoming) (co-author).  “How Social Movements Shape the Law to Address Health Disparities,” Bill of Health (Sept. 24, 2020). “June Medical: Reason or Politics?,” Human Rights at Home (June 30, 2020).  “Floating Lungs: Forensic Science in Self-Induced Abortion Prosecutions,” 100 Boston University Law Review 1111 (2020).

Brook Baker  “Collaboration Versus Monopolies and Nationalism: What Happened to Solidarity?” The BMJ (forthcoming). “Moderna Responds to Activist Pressure, But In the Race for Our Lives, We Need More Than Baby Steps,” HealthGap (Oct. 8, 2020) (co-author). “How Secret Deals Could Keep a COVID-19 Drug Out of Reach for Millions,” Los Angeles Times (July 1, 2020).   “In Addition to Outrageous Prices and Preferential Supply to the US only, Gilead’s Allowance for Compulsory Licenses in its Remdesivir License Needlessly Limits Supply,” Health GAP (June 11, 2020).

Leo Beletsky  “Fentanyl panic goes viral: The spread of misinformation about overdose risk from casual contact with fentanyl in mainstream and social media,” The International Journal of Drug Policy (Sept. 2020) (co-author). “Memo: From Crisis Response to Harm Prevention: The Role of Integrated Service Facilities,” Data for Progress (Sept. 1, 2020) (co-author). “Situating the Continuum of Overdose Risk in the Social Determinants of Health: A New Conceptual Framework,” The Milbank Quarterly (Aug. 2020) (co-author).   “Tackling the overdose crisis: The role of safe supply,” International Journal of Drug Policy (June 2020) (co-author).

Claudia Haupt  “Platforms As Trustees: Information Fiduciaries and the Value of Analogy,” 134 Harvard Law Review Forum (forthcoming). “Public Health Originalism and the First Amendment,” Washington and Lee Law Review (forthcoming) (co-author). “When Health Advice is Hard to Come By, BIPOC Suffer the Consequences,” Bill of Health (Oct. 6, 2020). “Which Legal Approaches Help Limit Harms to Patients from Clinicians' Conscience-Based Refusals?,” 22 AMA Journal of Ethics 209 (2020) (co-author).

Jonathan Kahn “Trump's 'Racehorse Theory' and Why It Matters,” Center for Genetics and Society (Oct. 5, 2020) (co-author).

Margo Lindauer  “A Pandemic Within a Pandemic — Intimate Partner Violence During Covid-19,” The New England Journal of Medicine (Sept. 16, 2020).

Wendy E. Parmet “Health Policy in the Supreme Court and a New Conservative Majority,” JAMA Viewpoint (Oct. 27, 2020) (co-author). “Rediscovering Jacobson in the Era of COVID-19,” 100 Boston University Law Review Online 117 (2020). “Immigration Law as a Social Determinant of Health,” 92 Temple Law Review 931 (2020). “The Plenary Power Meets the Police Power: Federalism at the Intersection of Health & Immigration,” 45 American Journal of Law & Medicine 224 (2020).

David Rochefort  “Making Single-Payer Reform Work for Behavioral Health Care: Lessons from Canada and the United States,” 50 International Journal of Health Services 334 (Feb. 23, 2020).

Michael Sinha “Fentanyl panic goes viral: The spread of misinformation about overdose risk from casual contact with fentanyl in mainstream and social media,” 86 The International Journal of Drug Policy (forthcoming) (co-author). “Generic But Expensive: Why Prices Can Remain High for Off-Patent Drugs,” 71 Hastings Law Journal 1019 (May 2020) (co-author). “COVID-19 The Law and Limits of Quarantine,” The New England Journal of Medicine (April 2020) (co-author). “Why we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus,” The Washington Post (Feb. 2020) (co-author).

Richard Wamai  “Five insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019,” 396 The Lancet 1135 (Oct. 17, 2020) (co-author). “Measuring Universal Health Coverage based on an index of Effective Coverage of Health Services in 204 countries and territories, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019,” The Lancet (Aug. 2020) (co-author). “COVID-19 pandemic in the African continent: forecasts of cumulative cases, new infections, and mortality,” medRxiv (April 16, 2020) (co-author). “Visceral Leishmaniasis: A global overview," Journal of Global Health Science (April 9, 2020) (co-author).

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