Event Description The U.S. needs a mental health moonshot. Inspired by the Apollo moon landing, moonshots are ambitious projects with monumental goals. The U.S. has a history of funding moonshots with federal tax dollars, and the Human Genome Project is one recent example. More recently, in 2016, President Obama and Vice President Biden announced the…
Event Description Until recently, telehealth services were expensive, rarely available, and often of limited scope and quality. But the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid, radical expansion. To promote the adoption of telehealth services, the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaxed the requirement that providers communicate with patients…
Event Description The language of medical science has been used by law enforcement to justify police brutality. For example, a police officer present at the killing of George Floyd suggested that Floyd might have been experiencing “excited delirium,” a term that, while not recognized by major medical associations, is sometimes used by law enforcement to…
Event Description How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the health care workforce? And how will the pandemic reshape the health care workforce going forward? It is not hard to find news stories about insufficient personal protective equipment, burnout, and the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on health care workers. But on the ground, in the day-to-day,…
Event Description For twenty years, overdose deaths in the U.S. have sharply increased. In 2019, more than 70,000 Americans died of drug-related causes. Preliminary data suggests the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating this trend. To address the overdose crisis, President Biden released a plan for increased utilization of drug courts and mandatory drug treatment. But these…
Event Description Can private companies effectively serve public health functions? During the COVID-19 pandemic, private companies have stepped into public health roles traditionally held by government agencies and non-governmental organizations. For example, Google and Apple collaborated to create exposure notification software that has been adopted domestically and internationally; Verily, the life sciences division of Google’s…
Seminar Series Description On March 16, we hosted the final installment of the COVID-19 and the Law: Disruption, Impact, and Legacy Seminar Series. This seminar series considered the ethical, legal, regulatory, and broader social and institutional impacts that COVID-19 has had, as well as the longer-lasting effects it may have on our society. This fifth…
Event Description The COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate effects on the lives of persons with disabilities generally, and especially pronounced effects on specific subsets of this diverse population, including youth with intellectual, developmental, cognitive, and psychosocial disabilities. For example, a letter published recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry on behalf of the directors of…
Seminar Series Description On March 3, we held the fourth installment of the COVID-19 and the Law: Disruption, Impact, and Legacy Seminar Series. This seminar series considered the ethical, legal, regulatory, and broader social and institutional impacts that COVID-19 has had, as well as the longer-lasting effects it may have on our society. This fourth…
Seminar Series Description On February 23, we hosted the third installment of the COVID-19 and the Law: Disruption, Impact, and Legacy Seminar Series. This seminar series considered the ethical, legal, regulatory, and broader social and institutional impacts that COVID-19 has had, as well as the longer-lasting effects it may have on our society. This third…
