In June 2023, the Public Health Ethics and Law (PHEAL) Program convened a workshop at CBH entitled “Teaching Public Health Law Outside of a Law School.”  The first output of the workshop, was this commentary published today in Health Affairs.  Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD, and co-authors argue that law is as core to public health as epidemiology and biostatistics and should be centered in schools and programs of public health.

Including law within public health curricula provides future practitioners with critical tools to identify and address legal issues to advance public health. Importantly, this foundational education supplies public health students with understanding of the skills to confront the structural drivers of health inequities.  Read article>>

From the moment students set foot in medical school, they are instilled with the concept of medical professionalism: their sacred responsibility to conduct themselves with the values of a profession that is granted automatic trust in society. The problem, as many medical students have also learned, is that where “professional” is vague, "unprofessional” is even more so.  "This can prove particularly pernicious to residents of color, said Dr. Adaira Landry, an adviser at Harvard Medical School and co-author on a recent NEJM article on the “overpolicing” of Black residents.

Medicine was at a crossroads from 1997 to 2007, when corporations were snapping up individual practices and turning them into for-profit enterprises.  Doctors saw their time with patients dwindle, and patients saw their quality of care decline.  “There was a rising public perception that doctors were just like everyone else: They’re just looking to make a buck,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, a medical ethicist studying the ethics of managed care during this period. “The fear was that our sense of professionalism was being lost.”  Read article>>