Our students ought to know about the history of formal hospital segregation and desegregation. To that end, this article urges those who teach foundational health law and policy courses to do three things. First, to teach the Simkins case. Second, to swap out the usual Medicare signing ceremony picture for one that includes W. Montague Cobb, M.D., Ph.D. Third, to highlight how the implementation of that program for the elderly led, in a matter of months, to the desegregation of hospitals throughout the country.

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Unaccompanied immigrant children continue to arrive at the US-Mexico border and are at high risk for ongoing abuse, neglect, and poor mental and physical health. We are medical and legal experts in the fields of immigrant and refugee health, child abuse, and the legal rights of international refugee and migrant children. We provide an overview of US federal agencies with custody of unaccompanied immigrant children, a summary of medical care provided while in custody, and recent findings from the independent Juvenile Care Monitor Report mandating new custodial conditions for immigrant children while in federal custody. We provide recommendations to improve the health and well-being of unaccompanied immigrant children while in custody and once released to US sponsors. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(3):340-346. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307570).

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Policy Points People with disabilities experience a vicious cycle of poverty, poor health, and marginalization partly because of the inequitable implementation and enforcement of laws, including underenforcement of civil rights and housing laws and overenforcement of punitive nuisance and criminal laws. Inequitable enforcement reflects policy choices that prioritize powerful entities (e.g., landlords, developers) to the detriment of people who experience intersectional structural discrimination based on, for example, race, disability, and income. Equitable enforcement, a process of ensuring compliance with the law while considering and minimizing harms to marginalized people, can promote health and disability justice by increasing access to safe, stable, and accessible housing.

How much do citizens value democracy? How willing are they to sacrifice their liberties and voting rights for growth, equality, or other social outcomes? We design a conjoint experiment in nationally representative surveys in Brazil, France, and the United States in which respondents choose between different societies that randomly vary in their economic outcomes (country income, income inequality, social mobility), political outcomes (democracy, public health insurance), and the level of personal income for each respondent. Our research allows us to estimate the respondents\' willingness to trade off democracy for individual income (as well as other societal attributes). We find that, on average, individuals are strongly attached to democracy and a robust welfare state. They prefer to live in a country without free democratic elections only if their individual income multiplies by at least three times and in a country without public health insurance only if their individual income more than doubles. After estimating these preferences at the individual level for all respondents, we show that, although there is an authoritarian minority in all three countries, forming a nondemocratic majority (by offering more income and/or other goods to respondents) is very unlikely. Our findings imply that, contrary to a growing discussion about the crisis of democracy, liberal democratic values remain substantially robust in high and middle income democracies.

To examine health behaviours of refugees and asylum seekers, in relation to their knowledge of public benefits and legal rights.
Qualitative study, utilising an open-ended, semi-structured interview guide to ensure information-rich data collection. Thematic content was analysed using qualitative research software.
Participants were drawn from the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights (WCCHR) in New York City, a single-center, human rights clinic with a globally representative patient population. All interviews were conducted at the Weill Cornell Medicine Clinical and Translational Science Center, a multidisciplinary space within an urban academic medical center.
Twenty-four refugees and asylum seekers currently living in the greater New York City area. Eligible participants were 18 years of age or older and had previously sought services from the WCCHR. The recruitment rate was 55%.
Themes and concepts in participants\' health, knowledge, perceptions of and experiences with accessing healthcare and public benefits programmes.
Twenty-four participants represented 18 countries of origin and 11 primary languages. Several impediments to accessing healthcare and public benefits were identified, including pragmatic barriers (such as prohibitive costs or lack of insurance), knowledge gaps and mistrust of healthcare systems.
There is low health engagement by refugees and asylum seekers, as a result of multiple, complex factors impeding the ability of refugee and asylum seekers to access healthcare and other public benefits for which they are eligible-with resultant detrimental health effects. However, there is an opportunity to utilise novel approaches, such as digital technologies, to communicate relevant information regarding legal rights and public benefits to advance the health of vulnerable individuals such as refugees and asylum seekers.

History and experience teach us that our Constitution and laws can be instruments of racial discrimination and oppression as well as tools for advancing freedom and equality. The substance of our laws matters, and there is much to be learned from innovative policies and legal strategies around the country. In addition to laws promoting health equity and racial justice at the state, tribal, and local levels, a new federal Executive Order has the potential to drive major positive change if fully and properly implemented. Just as important, however, is linking legal advocacy with dynamic social movements, shrewd communication strategies, and courageous civic leadership that insists on transformative change. In this article, I briefly recount the turbulent relationship between law and equity in our nation; discuss the elements that can lead to major progress through law; and recommend specific steps that different actors can take to move an equity and opportunity agenda forward.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, officials in the United States at all levels of government utilized their legal authorities to impose a wide range of measures designed to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; the causative agent of COVID-19), including shutting down businesses, limiting the size of gatherings, requiring masking, and mandating vaccination. These orders and regulations were challenged in court cases that resulted in more than 1000 judicial decisions. Common claims were based on alleged procedural and substantive due process violations, violations of religious liberty, and violations of officials\' scope of authority. In more than three fourths of the decisions, the court refused to grant the plaintiffs the relief sought. However, plaintiffs found success in several notable cases, especially in federal court. These recent decisions, as well as broader prepandemic trends, have important implications for public health officials\' exercise of their public health powers, especially when those exercises implicate religious liberty. In this legal environment, officials may need to rely more on the powers of persuasion than on their legal authority alone. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(3):280-287. https://doi.org/10.2105/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307181).

This paper critiques black citizenship in America. Using the \"warring ideals\" of W.E.B DuBois, it posits that African American citizenship is a complex interplay between the universality of citizenship, i.e., the ideals of the western liberal tradition, and the lived realities of citizenship. Highlighting the paradox of race, the article underscores that black citizenship has never been a guarantee in American society. \"Warring ideals\" encompass a struggle between aspirational ideals of what American citizenship is supposed to be and what it actually is-especially for those who are marginalized. Lived realities of citizenship often mean coming to terms with daily encounters with racism and structural discrimination which affirm and reaffirm citizenship boundaries. The manuscript also evaluates how watershed movements such as the civil rights, black power, and Black Lives Matter movements have attempted to reconcile the ideals and the realities of American citizenship.