HEALTH LAW, POLICY, AND ETHICS: EMERGING CHALLENGES
(LAWI-4260) - 2 UNITS

This interdisciplinary course explores the intersection of health law, policy, and ethics, with a focus on emerging and evolving challenges shaping the future of healthcare. Students will gain foundational knowledge of the U.S. health care regulatory and delivery systems, including the key laws and regulatory actors that shape healthcare access and quality. Students will also be introduced to the core principles of bioethics ? autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice - that often guide health policy and practice. With this foundation, we will consider the rapidly evolving regulation of timely, complex areas of care including: medication abortion in the post-Dobbs era; vaccines and treatment for emerging diseases; FDA regulation of cutting-edge technologies like germline editing; and the ethical and legal implications of AI in healthcare. Through a combination of legal analysis and ethical inquiry, the course equips students to critically evaluate how law and policy respond-and sometimes fail to respond-to the needs of patients in response to rapid advances in medicine and biotechnology.

Pass/Fail:
No

Prerequisites:
None