Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights

• SPH LW 740: Health and Human Rights
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - This course focuses on health and it is closely linked to the realization of human rights. Preventable illness, infant mortality, and premature death, for example, are closely tied to societal discrimination and violation of human rights. This course explores the relationship between human rights and health by examining relevant international declarations in historical context, exploring the meaning of "human rights" and "health," and analyzing specific case studies that illuminate the problems, prospects, and potential methods of promoting health by promoting human rights on the national and international levels.
• SPH LW 830: Health Insurance and the Affordable Care Act
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719 OR SPHLW719) or instructor permission. - This seminar offers an in-depth examination of the pivotal role of public and private insurance in US health policy. Health insurance pays for almost all health care in the US, strongly influencing (often dictating) who gets what care and on what terms. The class explores how the Affordable Care Act affects the design, operation, and regulation of health benefit plans, including Medicare, Medicaid, employer-sponsored group plans, and commercial insurance. Investigating contemporary regulations, students learn fundamentals of insurance, where reforms do and do not alter such fundamentals, and whether reforms affect larger principles of law. Topics include state and federal regulation; ERISA plan requirements; ERISA preemption of certain state laws; accepting, managing and shifting financial risk; designing health insurance exchanges; contracting with providers, Accountable Care Organizations, employers, and individuals; designing and administering plans; defining benefits, including Essential Health Benefits; appeals and remedies; and state adaptations of health insurance exchanges, subsidy wrap-arounds, risk corridors, and Medicaid expansions.
• SPH LW 840: Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights
  Graduate Prerequisites: SPH PH719 or consent of instructor. - Health law, bioethics, and human rights converge within the field of public health at the national and international levels. This seminar explores the theoretical meaning of this convergence, engages the sources of authority for human rights, and uses case studies to examine how public health advocates can be effective in the realms of social justice and equity. Examples include the U.S. legal and various international standards creating a "right to health;" economic rights and the importance of money in health care; reproductive rights and technologies; standards for medical research and informed consent; and framing the end of life as a public health or a human rights issue.
• SPH LW 850: Public Health Law
  Graduate Prerequisites: SPH PH719 or consent of instructor. - Traditional public health is rapidly transforming itself from state programs to prevent disease in populations (e.g., vaccinations and newborn screening) to federal and international efforts to more broadly promote the "right to health." This problem-oriented seminar enables students to analyze and answer questions about health risks and public health policies as they typically arise in practice -- in all their complexity and without preassigned doctrinal labels. It covers contemporary examples of the seven deadly sins -- anger, gluttony, lust, sloth -- plus drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food, firearms, biobanks, epidemics, and surveillance. The seminar offers a systematic framework for identifying and controlling health risks, drawing on theories of risk perception, cognitive reasoning and empirical evidence. Students analyze and compare the applicability and effectiveness of different legal strategies to control risks, such as criminal and civil prohibitions, mandatory product standards, tort liability, mandatory data collection, biometric testing, conditions of employment, marketing restrictions, quarantine, and taxation. Emphasis is on the different scope of laws (state, federal and international) regulating personal behavior and laws regulating products and commercial activities. A writing project to develop a legal strategy to address a contemporary risk to health is required.
• SPH LW 854: Mental Health Law, Policy & Ethics
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or permission from instructor. - This seminar tackles some of the most complex issues in mental health, such as involuntary confinement, adolescent disorders and decision-making, deinstitutionalization, the right to treatment and the right to refuse treatment, criminalization, substance use disorders, medicalization and the meaning of mental illness, forced treatments, discrimination, confidentiality, research, and professional ethics. The course will focus primarily on legal cases, utilizing these as case studies to explore the intersection of law, policy, and ethics to determine the manner in which we attempt to understand and regulate in the area of mental health.
• SPH LW 951: Directed Studies in Health Law, Bioethics, & Human Rights
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - Directed Studies provide the opportunity for students to explore a special topic of interest under the direction of a full-time SPH faculty member. Students may register for a 1, 2, 3, or 4-credit directed study by submitting a paper registration form and a signed directed study proposal form. Directed studies with a non-SPH faculty member or an adjunct faculty member must be approved by and assigned to the department chair. Students are placed in a section by the Registrar's Office according to the faculty member with whom they are working. Students may take no more than eight credits of directed study, directed research, or practical courses during their MPH education.
• SPH LW 952: Directed Research in Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - Directed Research provide the opportunity for students to explore a special topic of interest under the direction of a full-time SPH faculty member. Students may register for 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits. To register, students must submit a paper registration form and signed directed research proposal form. Students are placed in a section by the Registrar's Office according to the faculty member with whom they are working. Students may take no more than eight credits of directed study, directed research, or practica courses during their MPH education.