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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Robert Cohen, MD, Robert L. Cohen, MD, 130 Barrow Street, New York, NY 10014, 212-620-0144, bobcohen@uic.edu

Over two million men and women are imprisoned in the United States today. Correctional Medicine has been preoccupied with providing medical care for more and more prisoners in more and more prisons. Facilitating mass incarceration is not the goal of Correctional Medicine. The difficult, intransigent problem which must be engaged is the deformation of medical care caused by the fact of incarceration, and the experience of the prison. Prisons are places of violence, and they inure physicians and other health workers to the severe injuries caused by violence, sometimes involving them as participants. Prisoners are seen as less than persons, and their welfare becomes secondary to the welfare of the correctional institution. Compassion is not easily taught, but is effectively ground down by the daily experience of working in prison. Disrespect for prisoners is easily learned. The doctor patient relationship is often fatally compromised by the transformation of the patient into a prisoner, with a consequent loss of sympathy and standing. Health professionals must identify with the welfare of their patients, not with the needs of the prison. Our panelists, practitioners and a former prisoner, will discuss these contradictions, and together, search for synthesis.

Learning Objectives:

• Attendees willl learn about the epidemiology of incarceration, and explore the contradictions involved in providing medical care in a place of punishment.

Keywords: Prisoners Health Care, Human Rights

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No