Event - Not Equivalent, But Better: Human Rights and Health Care Behind Bars in the Time of COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the lack of resources and oversight that hinders medical care for incarcerated people in the United States. The US Supreme Court has held that “deliberate indifference” to “serious medical needs” violates the Constitution. But this legal standard does not assure the consistent provision of health care services. This leads the United States to fall behind European nations that define universal standards of care grounded in principles of human rights and the ideal of equivalence that incarcerated and non-incarcerated people are entitled to the same health care. Drawing on a normative analysis and empirical research, this talk describes an incremental strategy based on expanding Medicaid into correctional facilities and improving comprehensive oversight that would move closer to the normative ideal without resolving many of the thorny problems of correctional health care.

Learning Objectives:
1. To understand the foundation in human rights theory for a standard of health care in jails and prisons
2. To define a pragmatic theory for advancing the health care of incarcerated people within the institutions and laws of the United States
3. To explain how COVID-19 has changed the expectations and conditions for carceral health care in the United States

This is an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA) hosted by the Center for Bioethics and co-sponsored by the following U of MN units: the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, the Human Rights Center, the Medical School, the Program in Health Disparities Research, the Robina Institute, the School of Nursing, and the School of Public Health.

Want to learn more about Dr. Saloner’s work on this topic? Read his publication “A Human Rights Framework for Advancing the Standard of Medical Care for Incarcerated People in the United States in the Time of COVID-19” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9212822/

Participants are eligible to receive a Certificate of Attendance to submit to their respective professions for CEUs. Certificates of Attendance are available only to live attendees who are present for 75% or more of the talk.

Event start time: 12:15 pm

Event end time: 01:30 pm

Advertisement Want to advertise here?

Poverty, Puritanism, and Popularity: The Resurgence of Eugenics through Viral Content Online

It began with a video of a pregnant mother narrating over a sped-up video of her rearranging kitchen furniture. She explained that her family of six was becoming seven and were all living in a one-bedroom apartment. She talked about the difficulties and how all of their children sleep in the living room and kitchen […]

November 20, 2024

Have We Finally Amused Ourselves to Death? The Triumph of Entertainment Values over Civic Virtues

In early 2016, I wrote a blog for Bioethics Today (formerly bioethics.net) that examined the rise of the Trump movement as a testament to the work of cultural critic Neil Postman. Specifically, Postman’s work Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business predicted that our screen culture, with its obsession with superficial entertainment, […]

November 18, 2024

Insulin Price Controls, Who Falls Through the Gaps?

In the United States, 6 million people take insulin to control their type 2 diabetes. In recent years, the high price of insulin has been widely covered in the media. Disturbing stories of insulin rationing and patient deaths have been widely reported. A Yale study from 2018 found that 1 in 4 patients with diabetes […]

November 11, 2024

When Worlds Collide: The Problem of Health Inequities and Anti-Immigrant Politics

This editorial appears in the November 2024 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics Seeing language barriers as a significant threat to the health of patients calls for a response from health-care institutions and providers at all levels. Failing to respond allows an arbitrary social circumstance to deny full opportunity for a healthy life to particular persons. […]

November 4, 2024