In Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19, 50 top national experts review the U.S. policy response to the crisis. Their research details the widespread failure of the country’s leadership in planning and executing a cohesive, national response, and how the crisis exposed weaknesses in the nation’s health care and public health systems.
By temperament, I’m generally an aggressive interpreter of state public health codes. In normal times, I argue for an expansive interpretation of health officers’ authority to protect the public’s health. But these are not normal times. A non-trivial portion of the public believes the coronavirus is a hoax and mask-wearing mandates are tyrannical. One result of this resistance is that public health officials have been attacked and threatened for issuing or enforcing COVID-19 mask-wearing or stay-at-home orders. Health officers cannot ignore the potential threats to their personal safety. Depending on the local political environment, some caution is called for—caution, not acquiescence.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased food insecurity across the country and Native American communities are acutely impacted because of poverty and loss of traditional food systems and practices (hunting, gathering, and cultivating culturally relevant and locally available foods). The scope of Native American food insecurity prior to COVID-19, while difficult to quantify, is an important baseline for understanding the challenge facing this community, the resources that are needed and whether current governmental programs are adequately meeting those needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the structural inequalities that Black Americans experience in this country. Black people are more likely to have pre-existing conditions that lead to COVID-19 susceptibility and are more likely to be uninsured or have inadequate insurance coverage compared to white people. These structural inequalities, combined with incidences of medical racism, including reports of Black people being turned away from hospitals, have contributed to the shockingly high rates at which Black people have died from COVID-19.
As the nation continues to grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Network has joined with public health law partners to produce a report that includes critical analyses and recommendations from 50 national experts convened to assess the U.S. policy response to the crisis to date.
A county health department seeks guidance on whether the department can issue a press release indicating that individuals who attended a party on a specific date at a specific address may have been exposed to COVID-19.
Conducting a regular assessment of laws and policies is a strategy for addressing health equity, especially when that assessment includes and is informed by community perspectives. The Network’s latest tool – Equity Assessment Framework for Public Health Laws and Policies – is designed to assist policymakers and practitioners in assessing new and existing laws and policies through an equity perspective. This framework can be applied to statutes, regulations, ordinances, resolutions, declarations, organizational policies, and policy guidance that either directly impact public health or impact the operations of agencies or organizations responsible for health outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased food insecurity across the country and Native American communities are acutely impacted because of poverty and loss of traditional food systems and practices (hunting, gathering, and cultivating culturally relevant and locally available foods). The scope of Native American food insecurity prior to COVID-19, while difficult to quantify, is an important baseline for understanding the challenge facing this community, the resources that are needed and whether current governmental programs are adequately meeting those needs.
How could I make the most of my public health law background as an “actively retired” public health attorney during a pandemic whose scope has not been seen since The Great Influenza of 1918-1919? The COVID-19 pandemic flared in the spring of 2020 while preparations were underway for the 2020 New Mexico Primary Election scheduled for June 2, 2020, with early voting beginning on May 5, 2020.
Public health law and policy stories that made headlines recently include mask requirements in schools, SNAP enrollment amidst COVID-19, reparations as a means to address health disparities for Black communities, a Supreme Court Ruling on the ACA’s contraceptive care mandate, U.S. withdrawal from W.H.O., evictions and vulnerable populations, and more.
In Kemp v. Bottoms, the State of Georgia sued the City of Atlanta seeking to declare null and void three local emergency orders issued by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The orders at question roll back the reopening of Atlanta and, to deter the spread of the virus, mandate that people in the city wear masks when outside or in commercial businesses. Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, has been unwilling to mandate face coverings throughout the state and has aggressively sought to re-open his state’s businesses.
Many are optimistic that a COVID-19 vaccine will allow us to return to “life as we know it,” with worry-free in-person gatherings like large sporting events and in-person university classes. While a vaccine is likely not the cure-all to the coronavirus pandemic and all it has brought with it, development of a safe and widely available vaccine will certainly signal a light at the end of the tunnel.
