Authority to Improve or Harm Health: The Public Health Front in a Decades-Long Battle Over Governmental Powers

Authors

Sabrina AdlerFollow
Sara BartelFollow
Heather WongFollow

Document Type

Symposium Article

Abstract

Backlash to local, state, and federal responses to combat COVID-19 has resulted in a small but vocal cohort of legislatures and courts trying to change long-settled and foundational principles of public health decision-making. They have shifted authority away from experts and local decision-makers, limiting emergency response in ways that also impact day-to-day public health efforts. Considering some examples of other recent preemption efforts, it is clear that COVID-era backlash is part of a longer-term deregulatory agenda, often framed as an effort to keep “big government” out of people’s lives and to preserve individual freedoms. However, the impact of such deregulation is clear: in the public health sphere, it harms those it purports to protect by limiting access to rights, services, and information that can improve people’s opportunities to live healthy lives. Nonetheless, we now have an opportunity to reinvigorate the public health system such that it better centers the needs of the entire population and serves all it intends to protect.

Recommended Citation

Sabrina Adler, Sara Bartel & Heather Wong, Authority to Improve or Harm Health: The Public Health Front in a Decades-Long Battle Over Governmental Powers, 17 St. Louis U. J. Health L. & Pol'y (2024).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/jhlp/vol17/iss1/4