Lawrence O. Gostin on Biosecurity Policy: Are We Safer Today?

World-acclaimed authority Lawrence O. Gostin analyzes biosecurity policy since 9/11. He begins with the question: Are we safer now? Then comes a review of biosecurity legislation, followed by discussion of planning to deal with specific diseases and the problems with such an approach, and then an explanation of what the right approach is. He concludes by covering the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and related civil liberties questions

An Assessment of Mayor Bloomberg\u27s Public Health Legacy

This article contains Rodger D. Citron\u27s interview with Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center and the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, regarding Gostin\u27s article for the Hasting Center Report addressing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public health legacy

An Assessment of Mayor Bloomberg\u27s Public Health Legacy

This article contains Rodger D. Citron\u27s interview with Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center and the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, regarding Gostin\u27s article for the Hasting Center Report addressing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s public health legacy

Healthcare Reform Hangs in the Balance

In this timely new briefing, Professor Lawrence O. Gostin, University Professor and Faculty Director, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University writes: Prior to Tuesday’s arguments, I believed that the Supreme Court would uphold the health insurance purchase mandate by a comfortable margin. But now I believe that health care reform hangs in the balance. Here are the key arguments on which the future of President Obama’s health care reform depends: a greater freedom, cost-shifting, the health care market, acts versus omissions, limiting principles, the population-base approach, and what is necessary and proper. If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, everyone’s premiums for health insurance could rise inexorably. Is that what a decent society would want or accept

Public Health as Statecraft and Soul-Craft

Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint. By Lawrence O. Gostin. Berkeley: University of California Press, and New York: Milbank Memorial Fund, 2001. Pp. 491 Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader. Edited by Lawrence O. Gostin. Berkeley: University of California Press, and New York: Milbank Memorial Fund, 2002. Pp. 523. A book review should not use clich& like tour de force, but I can\u27t think of another phrase that does justice to the magnificent achievement of Lawrence Gostin in these two volumes. They belong on the shelf of every reader of this Journal and indeed of everyone whose work or interests touch on the law, ethics, healthcare, and public health policy and practice. When Public Health Law was published in 2000, it instantly became the standard-setting, comprehensive treatise on the subject. The appearance last year of Public Health Law and Ethics, a companion reader designed to facilitate teaching as well as scholarship, provides a good occasion to consider this body of work as a whole and the broad significance it holds for the philosophical foundations and future directions of public health as a profession and as an instrument of public policy. In particular, Gostin\u27s work indicates just how important it is to understand the place of public health law and ethics within the framework of liberalism as a public philosophy

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law: Discovering Innovative Solutions for the Most Pressing Health Problems Facing the Nation and the World

The connection between health and an individual’s ability to function in society, as well as the importance of health to a society’s economic, political, and social wellbeing necessitates finding innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing health problems. The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University seeks to demonstrate the role that academia can play in addressing complex national and global health problems in a comprehensive, evidence-based, intellectually-rigorous, and nonpartisan manner. The O’Neill Institute currently has three research programs: global health law, national health law, and the center for disease prevention and outcomes. Projects within these programs examine a broad range of health law and policy issues, such as global health governance, global tobacco control, health worker migration, emergency preparedness, national and Chinese health reform, HIV and AIDS issues, food safety, and personalized medicine. These projects merge the scholarly capacity within the institute with the resources of its partners, which include the World Health Organization, World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. Additionally, the faculty and fellows of the O’Neill Institute regularly produce high-level scholarship and engage in teaching offering multi-disciplinary course offerings and innovative graduate degree programs. URL: http://www.law.georgetown.edu/oneillinstitute/documents/2010-03-09_oneill-solutions.pdf; http://mjlst.umn.edu/uploads/Pf/V1/PfV1QhiCT6lUOsv1AqDTCA/111_gostin.pdf

Human Rights in Global Health Governance

Human rights frame global health governance. In codifying a normative foundation for global governance in the aftermath of World War II, states came together under the auspices of an emergent United Nations (UN) to develop human rights under international law. Human rights law, establishing international norms to advance global justice, has thereby become a universally accepted framework for global health, and the past seventy years have witnessed an evolution of international human rights law to define the highest attainable standard of health. Conceptualizing health disparities as rights violations, these health-related human rights offer universal standards to frame government responsibilities for the progressive realization of health and facilitate legal accountability for health policy. Where globalizing forces have created an imperative for global governance institutions to meet an expanding set of global health challenges, human rights have come to guide institutions of global health governance.As rights-based approaches have become fundamental to global health governance, the proliferation of global governance institutions has warranted a wider sharing of human rights responsibilities for health beyond the UN human rights system. Institutions of global governance are not only seen as instrumental to the development of international human rights law but also as essential to assuring the implementation of rights-based obligations in a rapidly globalizing world. Over the past twenty-five years, the UN has sought to formalize these human rights implementation responsibilities across the entire global governance system. Translating international law into organizational action, global governance institutions seek to “mainstream” human rights across their policies, programs, and practices. To understand the ways in which human rights are realized in global health, this Special Issue of Global Health Governance examines the role of global health governance institutions in structuring the implementation of human rights for public health