This article explores the impact of Dobbs on access to assisted reproductive technologies. Clinical aspects of IVF, including embryo discard and cryopreservation, preimplantation genetic testing, and selective reduction of multiple pregnancy are potentially jeopardized by a new legal landscape that protects embryos over the interest of infertility patients.

This article traces the development and growth of health justice partnerships (HJPs) in three countries: the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The upstream framework presented in public health and medicine considers health problems from a preventive perspective, seeking to understand and address the root causes of poor health. Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) have demonstrated the value of this upstream framework in the practice of law and engage in upstream lawyering by utilizing systemic advocacy to address root causes of injustices and health inequities. This article explores upstreaming and its use by MLPs in reframing legal practice.

Cuba faces a dilemma between continuing its current portfolio of biotechnology drugs and vaccines with lower profitability or renewing its product portfolio with the associated costs and risks.

Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM) induce drug manufacturers to offer rebates to insurers and employers by denying coverage through formulary exclusions, impeding physician prescription through prior authorization, and reducing patient drug use through cost sharing. As they tighten these access obstacles, PBMs reduce the net prices received by the manufacturers.

A lack of transparency and concerns over patients costs at the pharmacy counter have increased Congressional focus on pharmacy benefits management practices. However, applying regulations without transparency into pharmacy benefits managers practices could do more harm than good.

This study assesses Latin America and Caribbean countries’ capacity to innovate new pharmaceuticals, defined as developing new drugs and vaccines, repurposing existing drugs, and inventing around patents to produce new drug variations. Vaccine innovation includes reengineering existing vaccines, developing new manufacturing methods, and the clinical development of unapproved vaccine candidates initiated elsewhere.

When confronted with moral dilemmas related to health, governments frequently turn to “moral experts,” such as bioethicists and moral philosophers, for guidance and advice. They commonly assume that these experts’ moral judgments are primarily a product of deliberate reasoning. The article challenges this assumption, arguing that experts’ moral judgments may instead be primarily a product of moral intuitions which, often subconsciously, respond to the social setting.

The social ecological model (SEM) is a conceptual framework that recognizes individuals function within multiple interactive systems and contextual environments that influence their health. Medical Legal Partnerships (MLPs) address the social determinants of health through partnerships between health providers and civil legal services. This paper explores how the conceptual framework of SEM can be applied to the MLP model, which also uses a multidimensional approach to address an individual’s social determinants of health.

This article argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is likely to impact medical decision-making by pregnant patients in a variety of contexts. Of particular concern are situations where a patient declines treatment recommended for its potential benefit to the fetus and situations where treatment is withheld due to potential risk to the fetus. The Court’s elevation of fetal interests, combined with a history of courts using abortion jurisprudence to guide their reasoning in compelled treatment cases, means that Dobbs has the potential to limit patient autonomy in a wide array of clinical settings. The article calls on professional medical associations to issue ethical guidance affirming the duty to respect the medical self-determination of pregnant patients.

During the 20th Century, thirty-two state legislatures passed laws that sanctioned coercive sexual sterilization as a solution to the purported detrimental increases in the population of “unfit” or “defective” citizens. While both scholarly and popular commentary has attempted to attribute these laws to political parties, or to broad or poorly defined ideological groups such as “progressives,” no one has identified the political allegiance of each legislator who introduced a successfully adopted sterilization law, and the governor who signed it. This article remedies that omission.

Palliative care and medical-legal partnership are complementary disciplines dedicated to integrating care to treat the whole patient and intervening before a legal or medical issue is at a crisis point. In this paper, we discuss the founding and operations of the Yale Palliative Medical Legal Partnership, give examples of typical cases, explain special considerations in this area of law, and propose areas for further research.

The World Health Assembly has encouraged WHO member-states to establish capacity in health technology assessment (HTA) as a support for achieving universal health coverage (UHC). Simultaneously, the WHO has stated that UHC is “a practical expression of the concern for health equity and the right to health.” This has prompted questions about potential tensions between priority-setting efforts and the right to health on the road to UHC. South Africa (SA) is an ideal setting in which to explore how the priority-setting work of an HTA body may be integrated with an existing rights framework.

Low-income women and, disproportionately low-income women of color seeking reproductive and pregnancy care are increasingly subject to what this article terms carceral care – care compromised by its’ proximity to punishment systems. This article identifies the legal and health care practice mechanisms leading to carceral care and proposes solutions designed to stop criminalization at the bedside.

Mild and moderate mental illnesses can hinder labor force participation, lead to work interruptions, and hamper earning potential. Targeted interventions have proven effective at addressing these problems. But their potential depends on labor protections that enable people to take advantage of these interventions while keeping jobs and income.

This article confronts the challenges and opportunities presented by medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) representing families impacted by the family regulation system. Based on the authors’ experience developing a collaboration between a medical-legal partnership, interdisciplinary law school clinic and nurse home visiting program focused on clients impacted by the family regulation system, the article challenges traditional conceptions of the MLP model and proposes an expanded vision for MLPs to address systemic injustice and improve outcomes for families.

The end of Roe v. Wade has significant implications for the autonomy of pregnant patients at the end of life. At least thirty states restrict the choice to withhold/withdraw life-sustaining treatments from pregnant patients without decisional capacity, invalidating prior advance directives and prohibiting others from choosing these options for the patient. Many restrictions are based on the Roe framework, applying after “viability” or similar considerations of fetal development or prospect for live birth. Scholars have also relied on the abortion framework, arguing that the restrictions impose an undue burden. The end of Roe will free states from having to craft limited restrictions designed to work around prior abortion jurisprudence. Similarly, advocates will no longer be able to draw support from the abortion framework, forcing them to rely instead on cases supporting rights to autonomy/bodily integrity in medical decision-making.