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Journals Contemporary Issues at the Intersection of Public Health and Environmental Law
Emerging Issues in Health Care Regulation: Protecting Patients or Punishing Providers
Meeting explores public health, environmental law
Symposium explores issues in health care reform
The SIU Law Journal publishes four issues annually including one Symposium Issue — a compilation of articles on a particular subject. During the course of their research and writing, the authors meet at a symposium at the law school to exchange ideas and receive feedback from one another as well as from faculty, students, and practitioners. This year’s syposium was co-sponsored by the SIU Center for Health Law & Policy and brought together some of the nation’s leading legal scholars, scientists, government regulators, community activists, and private attorneys.
The Journal of Legal Medicine is published quarterly by the American College of Legal Medicine in cooperation with the SIU School of Law. Professor Marshall Kapp serves as the editor, and law students serve as student contributors and editors. The subject of each year’s Health Policy Institute is the basis for a symposium issue of the JLM.
The conference examined the connection of public health and environmental protection to some of today’s most pressing issues, including the obesity epidemic, climate change, and prescription drug use, law school associate professor Patricia Ross McCubbin said. “We may take for granted that it’s important to keep pollutants out of the air or water and out of our lands, but we forget that if we protect the environment we can also protect the public from infectious diseases, cancer, and other illnesses,” she said.
While climate change might not often be considered a public health problem, a concern is that infectious diseases such as malaria, the West Nile virus, and encephalitis will spread from tropical areas into the United States and other nations as mosquitoes, ticks, and other insects migrate into new warm areas, McCubbin said. The symposium’s featured speaker, B. Suzi Ruhl, a senior attorney and director of the Public Health and Law Center at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington D.C., examined environmental justice and public health during the working luncheon. Other symposium topics included climate change and measures that communities can implement, using public health legal concepts, to encourage commerce that is environmentally and economically beneficial. Another panel looked at pharmaceuticals in the nation’s waterways, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s response, as well as alternatives.
Left, symposium speakers with moderator Patricia McCubbin. Right, SIU Law Journal students with advisor Frank Houdek.
Nationally recognized experts met at the SIU School of Law on May 15 to discuss the impact of potential governmental changes in the health care delivery system for both providers and patients during the 11th annual SIH/SIU Health Policy Institute. W. Eugene Basanta, law professor and co-director of the law school’s Center for Health Law and Policy, said this symposium looked at the potential impact any new governmental regulations could have for both health care providers and patients. Marshall A. Kapp, law professor and center co-director, emphasized that the debate on health care financing options in Washington, D.C., is not the only issue to be concerned with. Current health care reform efforts under consideration in Illinois are also important to keep track of, he said. “There are a lot of other pieces to the regulatory
Speakers included Robert J. Kane, the assistant vice president and legal counsel for the Illinois State Medical Society; the American Medical Association’s senior policy analyst Patricia Sokol; Daniel H. Melvin, partner and member of the Health Law Department, McDermott Will & Emery. LLP, Chicago; Dr. John Anderson, executive vice president of InfoMedic, Inc., and medical director/project manager for Student Health Services, Norfolk State University; and John D. Blum, John J. Waldron Research Professor of Health Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. puzzle on both the federal and state levels that have to be followed as well,” he said. One of the biggest challenges is coordination and communication between those interested in health care finance reform and others interested in sweeping reforms to the health care delivery system, Kapp said. Southern Illinois Healthcare, the SIU School of Medicine, the law school’s Center for Health Law and Policy, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, and the St. Louis-based Sandberg, Phoenix & von Gontard law firm were program sponsors.