Disability, COVID-19, and Triage

This is a past event

Exploring Resource Allocation and the Framing of Disability

Online Resources

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Event Description

The COVID-19 Pandemic is raising difficult to answer questions regarding the allocation of scare resources, such as ventilators. Providers are struggling to triage access to ventilators ethically. Some have argued that we should consider health status and maximizing health outcomes. Others counter that using health status to determine access would discriminate against people living with disabilities, relegating them to second class status.

The Petrie-Flom Center’s book Disability, Health, Law, and Bioethics (Cambridge University Press, April 2020) seeks to understand how our framing of disability influences medical and legal policies such as resource allocation. To mark the launch of our volume and to reflect the COVID-19 health care landscape, we gathered several of our authors and editors to explore the question of ventilator allocation in regard to people living with disabilities. Our panel considered how our framing of disability influences triaging choices and how we can best ensure the ethical and non-discriminatory distribution of limited, life-saving resources.

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School 2018 annual conference was organized in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

Panelists

  • Omar Sultan Haque, chapter author; faculty member in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and the Program in Psychiatry and the Law, Harvard Medical School and Co-Director, UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, American Unit

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Relevant Work on the COVID-19 Pandemic

About the Book

Historically and across societies people with disabilities have been stigmatized and excluded from social opportunities on a variety of culturally specific grounds. In this collection, the authors explore the impact that the philosophical framing of disability can have on public policy questions, in the clinic, in the courtroom, and elsewhere. They examine the implications of this understanding for legal and policy approaches to disability, strategies for allocating and accessing health care, the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, health care rights, and other legal tools designed to address discrimination. This volume should be read by anyone seeking a balanced view of disability and an understanding of the connection between the framing of disability and policies that have a real-world impact on individuals.

Learn more and order the book now!

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law School Library.