“The closing of Rikers is absolutely necessary. It’s not sufficient to transform the criminal justice system in New York City to become more humane, but it’s necessary.” – Dr. Homer Venters Description Following the Harvard Law Review Symposium on Prison Abolition and the first annual Harvard Law School Critical Race Theory Conference, participants in this…
Description The Harvard Medical School Annual Bioethics Conference convenes leaders in the field to explore ethical questions and concerns in health care. Held each April, this conference facilitates conversations among experts and supports members of ethics committees, health care professionals, bioethicists, administrators, attorneys, and others who are interested in addressing ethical issues. This two-day conference…
Description Medicaid is a federal- and state-subsidized health insurance program that covers about 75 million lower income people and is one of the largest payers for health care in the United States. In the past few years, Medicaid has been the center of a number of political storms, including the expansion of state coverage and…
Description Human beings are biologically predisposed to divide humanity into ingroups and outgroups, and this comes with a great social cost – the capacity for hate. While we may view ourselves and our communities as benevolent and egalitarian, we often view outsiders as inhuman, unworthy, or alien, allowing us to victimize them in conscious and…
Description Digital innovation is transforming health care, and the amount of digital health care data being generated will likely have increasing research utility over time. Despite the seemingly logical and inevitable application of health care data from deceased persons for research and health care both now and in the future, the issue of how best…
Description The Massachusetts Department of Public Health estimates that in 2018 alone, approximately 2,000 people died in the Commonwealth from opioid-related overdoses. The overwhelming majority of those who died of overdoses that year tested positive for substances banned under the Controlled Substances Act, such as fentanyl (89%), cocaine (48%), and heroin (34%). This panel discussed…
Description The Harvard Health Law Society hosted this panel discuss where students learned more about practicing health law through a public interest career. This event was free and open to the public. Featured Panelists Ellen Weinstein (HLS ’06) is a healthcare lawyer with a wide-ranging practice at Boston Medical Center, where she serves as Deputy…
Description States can be laboratories of health reform. States like Massachusetts and Oregon expanded coverage during previous periods of federal inaction. With solutions unlikely to come from a politically divided Washington D.C., how will states tackle the problem of health insurance becoming increasingly unaffordable and unattainable for many families? Is there a role for the…
Description In a world beset by serious and unconscionable health disparities, by dangerous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, and by a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems, humankind needs a new vision, a new architecture, new coordination among renewed systems to ensure central health capabilities for all. Dr. Jennifer Prah…
Gene-editing technologies offer substantial promise in treating disease, but their use raises important ethical and public health questions about how these innovations should be applied and regulated. Different groups have also sought to patent these technologies. What are the most recent controversies in this area and how should we approach resolving them? A light lunch…
