Mass vaccination campaigns have been used effectively to limit the impact of communicable disease on public health. However, the scale of the COVID19 vaccination campaign is unprecedented. Mass vaccination sites consolidate resources and experience into a single entity and are essential to achieving community (“herd”) immunity rapidly, efficiently, and equitably. Healthcare systems, local and regional public health entities, emergency medical services, and private organizations can rapidly come together to solve problems and achieve success. As medical directors at several mass vaccination site across the United States, we describe key mass vaccination site concepts including site selection, operational models, patient flow, inventory management, staffing, technology, reporting, medical oversight, communication, and equity. Lessons learned from experience operating a diverse group of mass vaccination sites will help to inform not only sites operating during the current pandemic but may serve as a blueprint for future outbreaks of highly infectious communicable disease.

Based on an analysis of relevant laws and policies, regulator data portals, and information requests, we find that clinical data, including clinical study reports, submitted to the European Medicines Agency and Health Canada to support approval of medicines are routinely made publicly available.

Disability rights law has made issues of access and accommodations much more visible in American life. Yet a byproduct of the increased awareness of disability rights has been “fear of the disability con,” that is, the common apprehension that people are abusing the law to gain an unfair advantage. Many times, this moral panic creates an invisible, oft-overlooked barrier for people with disabilities who desire to utilize their rights. They either are refused the right altogether or give up asking for it in the first place because they are afraid of being accused of being fakers. This Article shows how fear of the disability con surfaced along the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the schism between the ways in which people with disabilities generally fared under the pandemic and some popular perceptions regarding the “privileges” they allegedly received because of their protected legal status. Those so-called privileges include mask exemptions, vaccination priority, and permission to continue remote work. The Article concludes with lessons the COVID-19 pandemic experience can teach us about the nature and scope of the fear of the disability con.

Controlled donation after circulatory determination of death (cDCDD) is an important strategy for increasing the pool of eligible organ donors.

Telehealth is now a fundamental health approach to address health-related needs in a way that is consistent with the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) globally.

Recognizing marked limitations of global health law in the COVID-19 pandemic, a rising number of states are supporting the development of a new pandemic treaty. This prospective treaty has the potential to clarify state obligations for pandemic preparedness and response and strengthen World Health Organization authorities to promote global health security. Examining the essential scope and content of a pandemic treaty, this column analyzes the policymaking processes and substantive authorities necessary to meet this historic moment.

Egilman et al. review the current data sharing practices of three global regulatory agencies — Health Canada, the European Medicines Agency and the Food and Drug Agency. While there has been progress towards increasing transparency over the past decade, progress has been slow.

Every year millions of people suffer minor brain injuries, many of which occur in collision sports. While there has been substantial commentary and debate about the nature of this public health crisis, it is clear that the scientific and clinical arguments reflect values preferences and judgments that are often invisible in documents which combine artful language with undue focus paid to sources of uncertainty at the cost of clarity and transparency. This essay gives a brief history of these patterns and proposes a remedy.

From 2018 through 2020, HHS approved state Medicaid demonstration waivers to impose new eligibility conditions such as work requirements, connecting current “personal responsibility” rhetoric and historical suspicion of malingering. The Biden administration reversed course but advocated to the Supreme Court for expansive administrative discretion. This approach supports health equity now but could enable reemergence of restrictive health policies down the road.

The new NIH data sharing policy, effective January 2023, requires researchers to submit a data management and data sharing plan in their grant application. Expanded data sharing, encouraged by NIH to facilitate secondary research, will require informed consent documents to explain data sharing plans, limitations, and procedures.

Celebrations of playing through risk, skepticism of athletes perceived as faking injuries, unregulated training regimens, the mythos of amateurism, and lack of accountability for preventable health harms have long characterized many college football programs. Setting policies that effectively prioritize player health will require taking this history into account.

In 1889, The British Medical Journal published a piece titled, “Detective Medicine,” which describes feats of medical detection performed by physicians attending malingering prisoners. Though simulating illness had a long history, the medicalization of malingering at the fin de siècle led to a proliferation of such case histories and cheerful records of pathological feigners thwarted.

Recent guidelines and recommen dations from government prevention advisory groups endorsing shared clinical decision-making reflect an emerging trend among public health bodies.

Immunizing hundreds of millions against COVID- 19 through the most extensive national vaccine campaign ever undertaken in the United States has generated significant law and policy challenges.

Five international consensus statements on concussion in sports have been published. This commentary argues that there is a strong need for a new approach to them that foregrounds public health expertise and patient-centered guidance. Doing so will help players, parents and practitioners keep perspective about these potentially life-altering injuries especially when they recur.

Telehealth has the potential to address health disparities, but not without deliberate choices about how to implement it. To support vulnerable patients, health policy leaders must pursue creative solutions such as public-private partnerships, broadband infrastructure, and value-based payment. Without these initiatives or others like them, health disparities are likely to persist despite telehealth’s tantalizing potential.