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Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy

The COVID-19 pandemic (“the pandemic”) has magnified the critical importance of public policy deliberation in public health emergency circumstances when normal health care operations are disrupted, and crisis conditions prevail. Adopting the lens of syndemic theory, the disproportionate impact of th...

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Autores principales: Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta, Rivera-Agosto, Jorge L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295870
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.678210
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author Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta
Rivera-Agosto, Jorge L.
author_facet Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta
Rivera-Agosto, Jorge L.
author_sort Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic (“the pandemic”) has magnified the critical importance of public policy deliberation in public health emergency circumstances when normal health care operations are disrupted, and crisis conditions prevail. Adopting the lens of syndemic theory, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable older adults suggests that the pandemic has heightened pre-existing precarities and racial inequities across diverse older adult populations, underlining the urgency of needed policy reforms. While the pandemic has called attention to systemic failures in U.S. public health emergency planning at both federal and state levels of government, the important role of civil society in influencing policy decision making and advocating for legal and ethics reforms and social change in a democracy calls for more open dialogue in aging, public health and legal communities and constituencies. To foster this dialogue, one public health lawyer, who is also a bioethicist and gerontological social work researcher and served as chair of the New York State Bar Association Health Law Section COVID Task Force in 2020 (“Task Force”), shares her first-person perspectives on the process of leading the development of a statewide bar's recommendations for policy reforms, including the challenges and conflicts encountered. A hospital-based attorney and clinical bioethicist brings a clinical ethics perspective to the discussions. This first-person contribution discusses the power of constituencies to influence policy deliberation in a democracy, and the implications of the Task Force recommendations for future aging and public health policy, particularly in view of the high suffering burdens and trauma older persons and older people of color have borne during the pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-82913622021-07-21 Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta Rivera-Agosto, Jorge L. Front Public Health Public Health The COVID-19 pandemic (“the pandemic”) has magnified the critical importance of public policy deliberation in public health emergency circumstances when normal health care operations are disrupted, and crisis conditions prevail. Adopting the lens of syndemic theory, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable older adults suggests that the pandemic has heightened pre-existing precarities and racial inequities across diverse older adult populations, underlining the urgency of needed policy reforms. While the pandemic has called attention to systemic failures in U.S. public health emergency planning at both federal and state levels of government, the important role of civil society in influencing policy decision making and advocating for legal and ethics reforms and social change in a democracy calls for more open dialogue in aging, public health and legal communities and constituencies. To foster this dialogue, one public health lawyer, who is also a bioethicist and gerontological social work researcher and served as chair of the New York State Bar Association Health Law Section COVID Task Force in 2020 (“Task Force”), shares her first-person perspectives on the process of leading the development of a statewide bar's recommendations for policy reforms, including the challenges and conflicts encountered. A hospital-based attorney and clinical bioethicist brings a clinical ethics perspective to the discussions. This first-person contribution discusses the power of constituencies to influence policy deliberation in a democracy, and the implications of the Task Force recommendations for future aging and public health policy, particularly in view of the high suffering burdens and trauma older persons and older people of color have borne during the pandemic. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8291362/ /pubmed/34295870 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.678210 Text en Copyright © 2021 Morrissey and Rivera-Agosto. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Morrissey, Mary Beth Quaranta
Rivera-Agosto, Jorge L.
Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title_full Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title_fullStr Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title_full_unstemmed Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title_short Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy
title_sort protecting the public's health in pandemics: reflections on policy deliberation and the role of civil society in democracy
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295870
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.678210
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