Law plays essential roles in public health. Law defines health officials' jurisdiction, and specifies how they exercise their authority. It is a tool of public health work used to establish norms for healthy behavior. Policymakers use the law's language of rights, duties and justice in the most...

The world’s failed response to COVID-19 — characterized by weak health systems, a distrust in science, and vastly inequitable access to global public health goods — provides a historic opportunity to reform the global health architecture, including its legal norms, processes, and...

Justice is so central to the mission of public health that it has been described as the field's core value. Our account of justice stresses the fair disbursement of common advantages and sharing of common burdens. It captures the twin moral impulses that animate public health: to advance human...

Aid to developing countries has largely neglected the population-wide health services that are core to communicable disease control in the developed world. These mostly non-clinical services generate "pure public goods" by reducing everyone's exposure to disease through measures such as...

This article contains Rodger D. Citron's interview with Lawrence O. Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center and the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, regarding Gostin's article for the Hasting...

A global health treaty, a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH) – grounded in the right to health, with the central goal of reducing immense domestic and global health inequities – could serve as a robust global governance instrument to underpin the United Nations post-2015 Millennium...

In this article, we discuss the public health provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). We first set forth a framework to identify the key reforms that are needed for a robust public health system. These include workforce and infrastructure investments. We then assess...

The U.S. Global Health Initiative (GHI) represents the Obama administration’s new strategy for international development assistance in health. With a pledge of $63 billion over six years, GHI aims to fund PEPFAR and a set of broader global health issues (e.g., maternal and child health,...

International law has responded weakly to the inequities in health care, public health, and the broader determinates of health that collectively cause the greatest loss of lives and human potential every year. Approximately one-third of global deaths can be attributed to enduring and...

In her 2012 reconfirmation speech as WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan asserted: "universal coverage is the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer. It is our ticket to greater efficiency and better quality. It is our saviour from the crushing weight of chronic...