This year the L&HCP initiated the Rothenberg Health Care Law & Policy Speaker Series, named for Karen H. Rothenberg, JD, MPA, the Marjorie Cook Professor Emeritus of Law, founding Director of the Law & Health Care Program, and former Dean of the University of Maryland School of Law from 1999 – 2009. This series, established with funding from the Karen Rothenberg and Jeffrey Seltzer Law & Health Care Program Endowment, focuses on contemporary issues in health care law and policy.
The Rothenberg Speaker Series’ first three events tackled significant and extremely timely topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic while speaking to larger issues in health law and policy, such as the equitable allocation of scarce resources, the politics of public health, and systemic racism.
In the first event of the series, we were joined by Professor R. Alta Charo, the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and member of the National Academies’ committee that published the Framework for Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Vaccine. On November 2, 2020, Professor Charo joined the Law & Health Care Program’s Professor Leslie Henry for a presentation on “Challenges in Equitable Allocation of SARS CoV-2 Vaccine.” Her insightful summary of recommended vaccine allocation frameworks and their underlying principles was extremely timely. Professor Charo discussed the challenges of COVID-19 vaccine allocation, vaccine hesitancy in the U.S., and her insights into the development, fundamental principles, and a summary of the National Academies’ Framework and some key comparisons with other such frameworks. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session moderated by Professor Henry, who took questions from participants, who included a variety of legal academicians, practicing health care providers, health lawyers, alumni, and students. Read more, and watch the full event here.
On January 28, 2021, the series’ second speaker, Joshua M. Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement and Professor of the Practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) joined the Law & Health Care Program for a thought-provoking presentation on “The Politics of Public Health Regulation.”
In addition to his roles at Johns Hopkins, including as director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and Professor of the Practice in Health Policy and Management, Dr. Sharfstein previously served as the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as Commissioner of Health for Baltimore City, and as health policy advisor for Congressman Henry A. Waxman. His background and experience in public health policy-making at the local, state, and national levels, as well as his engaging educational style, lent a pragmatic yet spirited tone to an important and often contentious topic of discussion.
Sharing examples of both failures and successes of politics and public health law, Dr. Sharfstein focused on the challenges and politics of public health regulation, while impressing upon the audience the importance of getting the process right, especially in 2021. Thanks to his depth of experience, Dr. Sharfstein was able tie together such disparate regulatory topics as gulf coast oysters and infant crib bumpers. Using varied case studies, Dr. Sharfstein offered important process lessons applicable to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Professor Kathi Hoke, who moderated the event and has worked with Dr. Sharfstein on myriad public health projects throughout his time at the local, state, and federal governments and during his time at JHSPH, described the presentation as a “must-see for public health lawyers.” The large and engaged audience, including academics, policy-makers, government employees, and health law practitioners and students from a multitude of backgrounds, agreed. You can watch Dr. Sharfstein’s entire presentation here.
Most recently, Professor Ruqaiijah Yearby joined the Law & Health Care Program for “Eradicating Systemic Racism in the Government's Pandemic Response.” Professor Yearby is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity Center for Health Law Studies and Professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, and a specialist in racial disparities in health care, the political economy of health care, and social justice in medical research. She has dedicated her career to improving the lives of vulnerable populations by addressing the lack of equal access to quality health care.
On February 23, Professor Yearby shared the health justice framework she co-developed with Professor Seema Mohapatra to address systemic racism in the government’s pandemic response. Professor Yearby proposed that legal and policy responses, including any interventions mandating certain behaviors, must address the impacts of the systemic racism on communities, be accompanied by supports to enable compliance and minimize harms, and engage low-income communities and communities of color as leaders in the development of any such mandates.
Through the example of one agricultural plant whose workers were particularly hard-hit early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Yearby showed how existing worker protections and emergency relief efforts failed to protect essential workers, many of whom were undocumented, in a pandemic, thus disproportionately affecting workers of color (showing that “of the cases with racial and ethnic data, 56% of COVID-19 cases occurred in Latinos, 19% occurred in non-Latino Black, 13% in non-Latino whites, and 12% in Asians”).
Although each of the lectures had a large and engaged audience, Professor Yearby’s talk attracted hundreds of participants from all around the world, from the UK to Brazil, and attendees in the chat were highly engaged with Professor Yearby and each other, creating a real feeling of community among the attendees.
You can learn more about the topic of Health Justice in a pandemic response and watch Professor Yearby’s full presentation here.
The Rothenberg Health Care Law & Policy Speaker Series continues in March, with Jessica Roberts’ “Uncertain Terms: Consumer Privacy in the World of Digital Health Tech” on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, from 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT, which you can register for here.