October 2014 
Volume 2, Number 2

Northeastern Launches JD/MPH in Urban Health

Northeastern University's School of Law and Bouv� College of Health Sciences have launched an innovative dual-degree JD/MPH in Urban Health to meet the growing need for professionals trained to respond to unique public health challenges and opportunities facing urban populations, including racial and ethnic health disparities, illnesses associated with the built environment, substance abuse and community violence. The School of Law, which partnered with Tufts University School of Medicine to offer one of the nation's first JD/MPH programs, will now additionally offer the more focused JD/MPH in Urban Health to respond to student interest in acquiring specific expertise in navigating the unique public health challenges and opportunities of urban environments.

Public Health Advocacy Institute Holds Tobacco Endgame Conference

In September, the School of Law's Public Health Advocacy Institute, headed by University Distinguished Professor of Law Richard Daynard, hosted a conference, "50 Years After the Surgeon General's Report: Accelerating Tobacco Endgame Strategies in the United States." This first-of-its-kind conference in the United States highlighted federal, state and local actions that will lead to an end to tobacco-caused addiction, death and disease in this country.
Leo Beletsky
More Tools in the Overdose Toolbox
Assistant Professor of Law and Health Sciences Leo Beletsky is working with the US Department of Justice to help engage law enforcement in preventing fatal drug overdose. Beletsky served as the lead expert on legal and scientific issues in formulating a new Bureau of Justice Assistance/DOJ toolkit on this topic. The expected launch date is 10/27. Beletsky is spending the fall 2014 quarter as a visiting scholar at UCLA School of Law.

Baker Working with UN Development Programme

Professor Brook Baker is working with the United Nations Development Programme on three projects: a draft model law on medical products regulation in Africa; an analysis of the patent status, registration and price of select HIV medicines in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; and an analysis of Indonesia's patent law and a paper, "Indonesia Patent Law Review and Recommendations."
Faculty in the News

Ebola and the Fiction of Quarantine

The New Yorker harkens back to Professor Wendy Parmet's 2008 co-authored article in its August 11, 2014, issue: "In 2008, the legal scholars George J. Annas, Wendy K. Mariner and Wendy E. Parmet warned of 'the false premise that public health is a law enforcement or national security problem that can be solved by limiting the rights and liberties of affected individuals.'"
(more)
About the Program on Health Policy and Law
Based in Northeastern University School of Law, the Program on 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.
Northeastern University Health-Related Institutes and Programs
Northeastern University School of Law Health-Related Dual-Degree Programs
 

Will a US-India Working Group do the Bidding of the Pharma Industry?

In The Wall Street Journal, Professor Brook Baker comments, "The US pharmaceutical fox will be in the India henhouse protecting the US's pharmaceutical giants instead of poor patients in India and elsewhere who need access to more affordable medicines." (more)

Banks of Blood and Sperm

Professor Kara Swanson talks to The Atlantic about her new book, Banking on the Body, and the use of the term "bank," which she says was "borrowed from financial banking and redolent with implications of markets and cash flows," and "created the context in which Americans learned to think about body products and in which we developed our contemporary laws governing property in the human body."
(more)

RJ Reynolds' $23-Billion Punitive Damage Award Unlikely to Stand

University Distinguished Professor of Law Richard Daynard tells Reuters, "The reluctance of the tobacco companies to settle these cases, thinking they can handle the cases as a matter of course, may be a mistake."
(more)

Preventing HIV: The Decrmininalisation of Sex Work

In a blog for openDemocracy, Professor Aziza Ahmed and co-author J.M. Kirby write, "Mounting evidence such as that in the Lancet, that increased rights for sex workers contributes significantly to their health and well being, particularly by reducing HIV transmissions, may help sex workers and their allies expand on these new gains."
(more)
Recent Selected Publications by Our Faculty
Events

Roundtable: Toxic Trespass: Science, Activism and Policy Concerning Chemicals In Our Bodies 

October 20, 2014
Phil Brown, University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences and director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University, will speak about his research, including disputes over environmental causation of illness, community response to toxic waste-induced disease, biomonitoring and household exposure to toxics, environmental health research ethics and health social movements.
RSVP to Claudia Zickell.

Lecture: The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
October 27, 2014 
Nicholas Carr, author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist The Shallows, talks about his new book,The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. He is also author of the best-selling The Big Switch and Does It Matter? A former executive director of the Harvard Business Review, he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times and Wired. 

November 10, 2014

Donna Levin '78 is national director for the Network for Public Health Law. She previously served as general counsel for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The Network provides assistance and resources to public health lawyers and officials on legal issues related to public health, including health reform, emergency preparedness, drug overdose prevention, health information privacy and food safety. More than 3,500 public health practitioners, attorneys, researchers, policy makers and others have joined the Network since it was formed in 2010 as a national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
RSVP to Claudia Zickell. 

Roundtable: Professor Richard Wamai and Brook Baker Discuss Ebola: Law and Policy

November 18, 2014

Professor Richard Wamai, a member of the African American Studies Department at Northeastern University, is an expert on health systems, HIV/AIDS and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). His core areas of interest are HIV/AIDS programming and cost-effectiveness analysis, male circumcision for HIV prevention, and health sector policy and reforms focusing on decentralization, insurance and financing in sub-Saharan Africa. His other research interests focus on HIV/AIDS, health and health disparities among African-born populations in the United States. 

Professor of Law Brook Baker focuses on intellectual property and access to medicines and intensifying the legal, economic and policy response to the global HIV/AIDS pandemics. He has taught and consulted in South African law schools and law school clinics since 1997, and is a senior policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project). He is actively engaged in campaigns for universal access to treatment, prevention and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, especially expanded and improved medical treatment.
RSVP to Claudia Zickell. 
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