With disparate rates of morbidity and mortality among minoritized communities, COVID-19 illuminated the need for equity-informed practices in public health. Pacia et al posit FQHCs as entities that addressed inequity when others failed. This commentary further situates how FQHCs address the public health crisis of institutional racism and related health inequities every day and presents a FQHC-led Ethics and Equity Framework and Workflow Checklist to guide ethical and equitable engagement with FQHCs.

This tribute compares Charity Scott to Fred Rogers, highlighting how Charity nurtured health law colleagues’ unique gifts and built community. Continuing the neighborhood theme, it highlights encouraging developments relating to health, housing, and place: Medicaid housing supports and potential reparations for redlining-related health inequities.

Research on advanced biopreservation — technologies that include, for example, partial freezing, supercooling, and vitrification with nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming — is proceeding at a rapid pace, potentially affecting many areas of medicine and the life sciences, food, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Given the breadth and depth of its medical, scientific, and corresponding social impacts, advanced biopreservation is poised to emerge as a disruptive technology with real benefits, but also ethical challenges and risks. Early engagement with potentially affected groups can help navigate possible societal barriers to adoption of this new technology and help ensure that emerging capabilities align with the needs, desires, and expectations of a broad range of interested parties.

While the federal government continues to pursue a punitive “War on Drugs,” some states have adopted evidence-based, human-focused approaches to reducing drug-related harm. This article discusses recent legal changes in three states that can serve as models for others interested in reducing, rather than increasing, individual and community harm.

Balancing on a tightrope twenty feet above the ground is outside the comfort zones of many health law professors. Being there forces you to consider in new ways yourself, your skills, and your surroundings. Fears arise, and yet you must still act. And you must trust that the person who offered you this opportunity cared about you and your well-being, and that they would ensure there was a way to get from where you began to the other side.

The application of advanced biopreservation to organs donated for transplantation may make possible their indefinite storage and thereby improve the utility and equity they provide to patients. The technology is still at a preclinical stage, with many difficult, scientific issues that remain to be answered. At the moment, however, the actual capabilities of the technology are too indefinite to begin formulating the statutes, regulations, and ethical guidance that will be needed to obtain the benefits expected from its use.

The purpose of this study was to measure the prevalence of use of driver monitoring systems among U.S. adults, and factors influencing their adoption. One in five U.S. adults has used driver monitoring, primarily to obtain a discount on insurance. Safety benefits and financial incentives are likely to influence adoption.

Women are the fastest-growing population of people who use drugs in the US. As a group, they are more likely than men to experience stigma, poverty, and negative mental health outcomes. This article discusses the unique needs of women drug users in the US and provides suggestions on how to leverage national attention — and federal funding — to make harm reduction services in the US more gender sensitive, and, as a result, more effective in reducing harm for women who use drugs in this country.

This paper challenges historically preconceived notions surrounding a minor’s ability to make medical decisions, arguing that federal health law should be reformed to allow minors with capacity as young as age 12 to consent to their own Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC)-approved COVID-19 vaccinations. This proposal aligns with and expands upon current exceptions to limitations on adolescent decision-making. This analysis reviews the historic and current anti-vaccination sentiment, examines legal precedence and rationale, outlines supporting ethical arguments regarding adolescent decision-making, and offers rebuttals to anticipated ethical counterarguments.

This article argues that beneath the veneer of legitimacy in the organ, tissue, and body part transplantation systems exists a horrifying history of human commodification whose vestiges surprisingly linger in contemporary supply and allocation systems. This history, as the Article demonstrates, dates back to the colonial period in the United States, where “grave robbing” became an important feature in the advancement of medicine. This legacy lives on.

Cross jurisdictional collaboration efforts and emergency vaccine plans that are consistent with Tribal sovereignty are essential to public health emergency preparedness. The widespread adoption of clearly written federal, state, and local vaccine plans that address fundamental assumptions in vaccine distribution to Tribal nations is imperative for future pandemic response.

Charity Scott brought health law to Georgia State College of Law in the fall of 1987. Through her faculty appointment, along with her boundless energy and intellectual curiosity, she set herself on an odyssey. She began by teaching a single general health law class. This beginning led to the development of a full curriculum in the field, complete with experiential learning opportunities and a certificate in health law program. In addition to creating learning and career opportunities in health law for law students, her development of the Center for Health, Law and Society created academic opportunities for leading health law faculty.

Few people in my memory have a name that more appropriately defines the life they have lived. “Charitable purpose” as defined in O.C.G.A. § 43-17-2 includes any charitable or benevolent purpose including health, education, or social welfare. Anyone who knew Charity Scott knows that she lived a life devoted to providing and improving the health of her community, the education of law students about health law and its use to improve the health of her community, and social welfare by addressing the socio-economic determinants of health. If she had not been assigned that name at birth, those of us who knew her could have easily assigned Charity as a nickname.

Policies allowing some minors to consent to receive recommended vaccines are ethically defensible. However, a policy change at the federal level expanding minor consent for vaccinations nationwide risks triggering a political backlash. Such a move may be perceived as infringing on the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s health care. In the current post-COVID environment of heightened anti-vaccination activism, changes to minor consent laws may be unadvisable, and policy makers should proceed with caution.

The development of technologies for the biopreservation of infectious organisms requires careful analysis of benefits and risks. This article reviews the regulatory landscape and oversight responsibilities in the United States in respect to pathogen biopreservation. Focused on two globally significant pathogens, Cryptosporidium and Plasmodium, the article explores advantages and potential risks of biopreservation concerning biosafety, biosecurity and biocontainment.

Law is a critical determinant of health that public health practitioners encounter in everyday practice. Yet most do not receive any formal public health law training. This article discusses tangible opportunities for strengthening the capacity of current and future practitioners to leverage law to advance health equity priorities.

This article explores how time-related metaphors frame advanced cryopreservation technologies in environmental conservation. Cryopreservation “stops” or “freezes” biological time and “buys time” desperately needed to preserve species and ecosystems. We advance a framing of these technologies as logistical, highlighting how they create opportunities to shift materials, knowledge, and decision-making power through space and time. As logistical technologies, advanced cryopreservation techniques require active planning in the present rather than deferring responsibility and accountability to the future.

Law Schools are now required to provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism under ABA Standard 303(c). Law clinics, with their social justice orientation, have long taught about structural causes of bias and oppression and ways to intervene at system levels to prevent problems. Medical legal partnership (MLP) clinics have done so by employing concepts from social work and health science programs on structural competency. This article examines MLP and related curriculum to meet the ABA mandate.

Public health authorities (PHAs), including Tribal nations, have the right and responsibility to protect and promote the health of their citizens. Although Tribal nations have the same need and legal authority to access public health data as any other PHA, significant legal challenges continue to impede Tribal data access.

Despite significant scholarship, research, and funding dedicated to implementing criminal diversion programs over the past two decades, persons with serious mental illness and substance use disorders remain substantially overrepresented in United States jails and prisons. Why are so many U.S. adults with behavioral health problems incarcerated instead of receiving treatment and other support to recover in the community? In this paper, we explore this persistent problem within the context of “relentless unmet need” in U.S. behavioral health (Alegría et al., 2021).