 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Samantha Graff, JD and Marice Ashe, JD, MPH. Public Health Institute, 505 14th Street, Suite 810, Oakland, CA 94612, 5104448252 x 377, sgraff@phi.org
As government agencies, state and local health departments are presented with legal challenges beyond those facing private practitioners. California counties are now reexamining their duties and responsibilities in light of recent litigation regarding the civil detention of a non-compliant TB patient in a county jail. The litigation highlights the difficult balance that health departments must strike between protecting community health and respecting the legal rights of individual patients.
The California litigation involved a monolingual Laotian immigrant who was illegally detained in a county jail due to non-compliance with health orders. Her incarceration was riddled with missteps by the local health department, which was unfamiliar with the state statutes governing civil detention and with certain rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The county was fined $1.2 million and was ordered to cease using the county jail for civil detention.
The recent California litigation exemplifies the need to provide basic legal education and training to public health professionals. The presenters will discuss the types of authority that the law grants to health officers, the limits that the law places on that authority, and the duties that the law instructs health officers to perform. Upon learning about the legal bases that underlie their daily activities, the participants should leave with some specific strategies about how to improve public health practice.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Tuberculosis, Policy/Policy Development
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.