This compilation of carefully selected readings is meant to allow for deeper analysis of the issues covered in the companion textbook, Essentials of Health Policy and Law, yet also serves as an excellent complement to any text on health policy, or as a stand-alone text. 

 

The book is divided into five broad parts:  Part 1 provides a basic overview of public health; Part 2 covers topics in health care quality; Part 3 centers on the intersection of policy and law with medicine and ethics; Part 4 offers several resources on the topic of health system reform; finally, Part 5 is a series of resources collectively called “Tools for Health Policy Analysis”. 

 

Featuring thought-provoking perspectives of individual authors, policymakers, and judges that span the spectrum of political and social thought, this collection of readings will stimulate classroom discussion and reflection.

 

Features:

• Each grouping of readings is introduced by framing commentary and questions.

• Includes practical articles that describe the methods—and potential pitfalls—of policy analysis. 

• Offers examples of the administrative regulations, informal government memoranda, and budget proposals that serve as important instruments in a policymaker’s toolbox.

Joel B. Teitelbaum, JD, LLM - Professor and Director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program, Department of Health Policy and Management, Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George Washington University

Joel Teitelbaum, JD, LLM, is professor of public health and law, director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program, and Co-Director of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.  For 11 years served as vice-chair for academic affairs for the Department of Health Policy and Management.

 

Professor Teitelbaum has taught law, graduate, or undergraduate courses on healthcare law, healthcare civil rights, public health law, minority health policy, and long-term care law and policy. He was the first member of the School of Public Health faculty to receive the University-wide Bender Teaching Award, he has received the School’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and he is a member of the University’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers and the School’s Academy of Master Teachers. He has authored or co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed articles and reports in addition to many book chapters, policy briefs, and blogs on law and social drivers of health, health equity, civil rights issues in health care, health reform and its implementation, medical–legal partnership, and insurance law and policy, and he has delivered more than 100 invited lectures/presentations at leading universities and national conferences. In addition to Essentials of Health Justice, he is co-author of Essentials of Health Policy and Law (Fifth Edition). In 2000, Professor Teitelbaum was corecipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, which he used to explore the creation of a new framework for applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the modern healthcare system.

 

Among other organizations, Professor Teitelbaum is a member of Delta Omega, the national honor society recognizing excellence in the field of public health, and the ASPH/Pfizer Public Health Academy of Distinguished Teachers. In 2016, during President Obama’s second term, Professor Teitelbaum became the first lawyer named to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives (a.k.a. “Healthy People”), the national agenda aimed at improving the health of all Americans over a 10-year span. He serves as a member of the board of advisors of PREPARE, a national advanced care planning organization, and on multiple committees of the American Bar Association: as a liaison to the Task Force on Eviction, Housing Stability, and Equity, as an advisor to the Coordinating Committee on Veterans Benefits and Services, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Public Health Legal Services Research Project in the Center for Human Rights.

 

 

Sara E. Wilensky, JD, PhD - Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and Special Services faculty for Undergraduate Education, Department of Health Policy and Management, Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George Washington University, Washington, DC

Sara Wilensky, JD, PhD, is the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and special services faculty for undergraduate education in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC.

 

Dr. Wilensky has taught a health policy analysis course and health systems overview course required of all students in the Master of Public Health-Health Policy degree program, as well as the health policy course required of all undergraduate students majoring in public health. She has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on numerous health policy research projects relating to a variety of topics, such as Medicaid coverage, access and financing, community health centers, childhood obesity, HIV preventive services, financing of public hospitals, and data sharing barriers and opportunities between public health and Medicaid agencies.

 

As the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education, Dr. Wilensky oversees all aspects of GWSPH majors, minors, and dual-degree programs, sets the strategic vision for the undergraduate programs, and works with campus partners and outside stakeholders to improve undergraduate public health education.

 

Dr. Wilensky is involved with several GW service activities: she has taught a service learning in public health course in the undergraduate program; she has been heavily involved in making GW's Writing in the Disciplines program part of the undergraduate major in public health; and she is the advisor to students receiving a master in public policy or a master in public administration with a focus on health policy from GW's School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

 

Prior to joining GW, Dr. Wilensky was a law clerk for federal Judge Harvey Bartle III in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and worked as an associate at the law firm of Cutler and Stanfield, LLP, in Denver, Colorado.

Introduction

1. Bernard Turnock, “What is Public Health?” from Essentials of Public Health

2. Larry Gostin et al., “The Law and the Public’s Health: The Foundations” from Law in Public Health Practice

3. Case law: Jacobson v. Massachusetts (validity of state mandatory vaccine law)

4. Case law: DeShaney v. Winnebago County Social Services Department (public welfare and the “negative Constitution”)

5. Case law: Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales (public welfare and the “negative Constitution”)

6. Executive Summary from The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century

 

Introduction

7. Executive Summary from Crossing the Quality Chasm

8. Elizabeth McGlynn et al., “The Quality of Health Care Delivered to Adults in the United States” from New England Journal of Medicine

9. Summary from Unequal Treatment

10. Case law: Canterbury v. Spence (patient-oriented standard of informed consent)

11. Case law: Jones v. Chicago (managed care liability for institutional negligence)

 

Introduction

12. Carol Levine, “Analyzing Pandora’s Box: The History of Bioethics” from The Ethics of Bioethics

13. James Childress et al., “Public Health Ethics: Mapping the Terrain”

14. Case law: Roe v. Wade (constitutional right to abortion)

15. Case law: Planned Parenthood v. Casey (validity of Pennsylvania abortion statute)

16. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act

17. Case law: Gonzales v. Carhart (constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act)

18. Case law: Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (constitutional right to withdraw life-sustaining treatment)

19. Case law: Washington v. Glucksberg (physician-assisted suicide)

20. Case law: Vacco v. Quill (physician-assisted suicide)

21. The Oregon Death With Dignity Act statute, regulations, and state’s report on its use

22. Case law: Gonzalez v. Oregon (physician-assisted suicide)

 

Introduction

23. James Morone, “Morality, Politics, and Health Policy” from Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care

24. Thomas Rice, “Can Markets Give Us the Health System We Want?”

25. Sara Wilensky and Dylan Roby, “Health Centers and Health Insurance: Complements, Not Alternatives”

26. Bruce Siegel, Marsha Regenstein, and Peter Shin, “Health Reform and the Safety Net: Big Opportunities; Major Risks”

27. Sara Collins, Karen Davis, and Jennifer Kriss, “ An Analysis of Leading Congressional Health Care Bills, 2005-2007: Part 1, Insurance Coverage

28. State Coverage Initiative, “State of the States: Building Hope, Raising Expectations”

29. Lawrence Brown, “Comparing Health Systems in Four Countries: Lessons for the United States”

30. Karen Davis, invited testimony to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, “Learning from high performance health systems around the globe”

 

Introduction

31. Gail Wilensky, “Framing the Public Policy Question: Financial Incentives for Efficiency and Effectiveness”

32. Selections from Department of Health and Human Services Regulations on Standards for Privacy and Individually Identifiable Health Information as required by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act

33. State Medicaid Director Letter concerning the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005

34. Department of Health and Human Services 2008 Budget in Brief concerning Medicaid and SCHIP

35. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate concerning the Improving Head Start Act of 2007

36. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Board of Health, Amendment to the New York City Health Code, concerning phasing out artificial trans-fat in New York City food services establishments

37. Edwin Park and Matt Broaddus, “SCHIP Reuthorization: President’s Budget Would Provide Less than Half the Funds that States Need to Maintain SCHIP Enrollment.”