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• v.88(2); 2010 Jun

Making the Case for Laws That Improve Health: A Framework for Public Health Law Research

Context: Public health law has received considerable attention in recent years and has become an essential field in public health. Public health law research , however, has received less attention.

Methods: Expert commentary.

Findings: This article explores public health law research, defined as the scientific study of the relation of law and legal practices to population health. The article offers a logic model of public health law research and a typology of approaches to studying the effects of law on public health. Research on the content and prevalence of public health laws, processes of adopting and implementing laws, and the extent to which and mechanisms through which law affects health outcomes can use methods drawn from epidemiology, economics, sociology, and other disciplines. The maturation of public health law research as a field depends on methodological rigor, adequate research funding, access to appropriate data sources, and policymakers’ use of research findings.

Conclusions: Public health law research is a young field but holds great promise for supporting evidence-based policymaking that will improve population health.

Law is an important discipline within public health ( Gostin, Burris, and Lazzarini 1999 ). Legal “powers, duties and restraints” structure the mission of public health agencies and shape how it is carried out ( Gostin 2008 ). Law is a prominent intervention tool to achieve particular public health goals. Laws and their implementation also have important unintended effects, both positive and negative, on population health. Although public health law has a long history in the United States ( Tobey 1939 ), it was one of the fields of public health that fell into neglect when public health was thought to have conquered infectious disease. Over the past two decades, though, the reemergence of infectious disease as a major public health concern and a growing awareness of the complexity of health regulation at the local, national, and global levels have restored law to importance in public health and academic law. No longer confined to end-of-the-day conference panels on “legal and ethical issues,” public health law now has its own office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, academic centers, journals, national and international professional societies, and a shelf of important treatises ( Larkin and McGowan 2008 ).

Notwithstanding all the writing and commentary on public health law, there has been little discussion of public health law research and its place in the fields of law and public health. The evidence produced by empirical research is important to both public health law practice and scholarship. It constitutes the “facts” justifying regulatory action and supporting normative arguments about what policies are most desirable, effective, or consistent with human rights or other legal standards. To be sure, law legitimately serves as a site for the articulation and clash of values, and lawmaking often necessitates decisions that cannot await full information. Furthermore, not all law is or can be “evidence based,” even in public health. At the same time, empirical research is not just an ammunition dump for adversarial legal battle. The responsible use of law as a tool for improving public health requires a commitment to the pursuit and consideration of scientific evidence when possible. In public health, just as in health care ( Sox and Greenfield 2009 ), evidence should inform the investment in and implementation of policy, and a consciousness of data and the scientific method can improve the decisions of policymakers and practitioners even in the absence of data. This is the promise of public health law research. At a time when empirical health law has emerged from a general flowering of empirical legal research as a distinct scholarly field ( Mello and Zeiler 2008 ), scientific research is a tie that can now bind law to public health. In this article, we describe and chart a future for public health law research. Our discussion was occasioned by the launch of a major initiative by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to sponsor public health law research and expand the field ( RWJF Public Health Law Research Program 2009 ). It thus is an opportune time to reflect on the field: its definition and boundaries, the types of research that a robust field of public health law research should include, and the challenges to be faced in growing and strengthening the field. (Although we are participating in the RWJF initiative as the leaders of its National Program Office, this article concerns the field of public health law research generally, not the specific priorities or funding areas of the Public Health Law Research program.)

Defining Public Health Law Research

We define public health law research (PHLR) as “the scientific study of the relation of law and legal practices to population health.” This includes both direct relationships between law and health, and relationships mediated through the effects of law on health behaviors and other processes and structures that affect population health. In this section, we elaborate on this definition in order to distinguish PHLR from other fields and forms of public health law knowledge.

Distinguishing PHLR from Public Health Law

Lawrence Gostin's widely cited definition of public health law is

the study of the legal powers and duties of the state to ensure the conditions for people to be healthy (e.g., to identify, prevent, and ameliorate risks to health and safety in the population), and the limitations on the power of the state to constrain the autonomy, privacy, liberty, proprietary, or other legally protected interests of individuals for protection or promotion of community health. ( Gostin 2000 , 4)

Using this power/duty/restraint formula, Gostin succeeds in focusing the field on the state's role in managing collective action to protect the population's health while still encompassing a diverse range of cooperating actors and related functions, including private actors and the health care system. His claims for public health law are broad enough to earn libertarian criticism: scholars have argued from diverse standpoints that Gostin and his colleagues in public health are expanding the jurisdiction of public health beyond its legitimate mission and into a realm of wrongful—and counterproductive—meddling in the autonomy of citizens ( Epstein 2003 ; Hall 2003 ; Rothstein 2002 ). Yet for others, Gostin's definition may be too narrow. Regulatory researchers, for example, question the importance of distinguishing between public and private actors in health governance ( Black 2008 ; Lobel 2004 ; Trubek 2006 ). Other commentators insist that public health law must include the role of law as a determinant and mechanism for the health effects of social and physical environments ( Burris, Kawachi, and Sarat 2002 ; Magnusson 2007 ; Mariner 2009 ).

Debate over the boundaries of public health law plays out differently in the realm of public health law research . In defining PHLR, we are concerned not with what is right, proper, or legitimate to include within the jurisdiction of public health law but with whether law can be empirically shown to have an impact on the health of the population. Commentators might disagree on whether equality, for example, ought to be considered a public health issue, but that question is different from whether it is possible to empirically identify the ways in which law affects health inequalities. Empirical data can be highly salient to disputes about normative concepts and positions but cannot themselves resolve disputes about the legitimate scope of public health or public health law or the extent to which health promotion should be traded off against other social goods, such as civil liberties. PHLR, then, is distinguished from public health law by its focus on description, explanation, and prediction—that is, its focus on empirical investigation.

Research versus Scholarship

When we refer to “research,” we intend a particular meaning: the use of systematic methods within an explicit theoretical framework to collect and analyze data. PHLR seeks methodological rigor in all phases of research, from the careful articulation and operationalization of theory through thoughtful and innovative study design to analysis, interpretation, and dissemination.

PHLR includes both qualitative and quantitative studies using experimental, quasi-experimental, observational, or participatory designs. It ranges from health impact assessments gathering limited data on legal effects in order to inform policymaking in real time, to complex experiments and quasi experiments studying the effects of law on health over extended periods of time. Formal decision analyses, simulations, econometric analyses, laboratory and social experiments, survey, interview, and focus-group studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses are included, as is legal research to systematically and reproducibly collect, classify, and quantify laws and judicial decisions for analytic purposes ( Hall and Wright 2008 ; Tremper, Thomas, and Wagenaar 2010 ).

Theory and methods may be drawn from a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, including epidemiology, biostatistics, law, sociology, history, political science, economics, anthropology, and psychology. From the natural sciences, PHLR imports the scientific method, approaching research questions with a hypothesis to be tested rather than a position to be defended; gathering data for the purpose of proving or disproving the hypothesis (or disproving a null hypothesis); and reaching conclusions based on a careful and restrained analysis and interpretation of all relevant data.

As we define it, public health law research is thus distinguishable from public health law scholarship. “Scholarship” embraces a range of nonempirical but no less valid and useful work on public health law, ranging from work grounded in philosophy or ethics ( Ruger 2006 ), to doctrinal exegesis ( Lazzarini and Rosales 2002 ), to the crafting of model laws, and to legal analysis arguing how the law ought to be applied in various situations ( Ruhl, Stephens, and Locke 2003 ). What we call PHLR does not exhaust all forms of knowledge gathering or analysis concerning public health law. Indeed, public health law scholarship includes many outstanding and influential works that have shaped the field of public health law but do not fall within our definition of PHLR.

“Law” and “Public Health”

A key challenge in defining PHLR arises from the potential breadth of the definitions of “law” and “public health” ( Magnusson 2007 ). In linking the two in PHLR, we take a broad sociological stance, encompassing not simply written laws on one side and morbidity and mortality on the other, but the whole range of institutions, practices, and beliefs through which laws influence health and the determinants of health. This is particularly important given that the timelines for law to influence health may be long and data on key outcome variables scarce; it may be important to examine the effects of law on mediating factors such as health behaviors. From the perspective of whether it is properly classified as PHLR, the key aspect of such a study is that it examines the relationship between a law variable and a public health variable.

Social epidemiology, the branch of epidemiology aimed at understanding social determinants of health ( Berkman and Kawachi 2000 ), provides a theoretical framework into which PHLR can readily fit ( Burris, Kawachi, and Sarat 2002 ). Most things human beings do, and most characteristics of our environments, have some impact on the level and distribution of health in a population. Whether styled as health inequities or health disparities, differences in health among identifiable subpopulations have become a major concern in health and policy ( Commission on Social Determinants of Health 2008 ). Health law scholars, too, increasingly recognize the need to examine individual interests and choices through the lens of population health, recognizing that “the choices individuals exercise and the health risks they face are determined, to a large degree, by the environments they experience and the populations they comprise” ( Parmet 2009 , 268; Sage 2008 ). PHLR, however, does not encompass the full scope of social epidemiology. That is, we confine our definition of PHLR to the study of law and regulatory practices and not the full spectrum of contributing factors.

Another distinctive aspect of PHLR's conception of “law” is that it is not confined to “law on the books”: constitutions, statutes, judicial opinions, and so on. The mainstream of empirical legal research over the past thirty years has acknowledged the salience of law as it is implemented in practice and experienced by those it targets. Studies of legality or legal consciousness ( Ewick and Silbey 1998 ), behavioral law and economics research ( Jolls 2006 ), scholarship on compliance theory ( Tyler 1990 ), scholarship on deterrence theory and tort law ( Mello and Brennan 2002 ), and regulation and governance studies ( Braithwaite, Coglianese, and Levi-Faur 2007 ) all explore this theme. PHLR is necessarily interested in the psychosocial mechanisms through which compliance is achieved ( Tyler 1990 ), the range of regulatory techniques that may be deployed ( Braithwaite, Coglianese, and Levi-Faur 2007 ), and how law “operates through social life as persons and groups deliberately interpret and invoke law's language, authority and procedures to organize their lives and manage their relationships” ( Ewick and Silbey 1998 , 20). Law is fundamentally a social practice embedded in institutions and implemented by agents. It is part of, not distinct from, the social environment whose influence on health is the focus of social epidemiology.

PHLR also properly encompasses both laws that were intended to affect population health and laws that have unintended health effects. What has been referred to as “interventional public health law” is law or legal practices that are intended to influence health outcomes or mediators directly. Likewise, “infrastructural public health law” establishes the powers, duties, and institutions of public health ( Moulton et al. 2009 ). But much of the law that influences population health was not adopted for that purpose and may on its face seem to have no connection to health at all. For example, criminal laws aimed at controlling illicit drug use may increase the risk of users acquiring HIV ( Friedman et al. 2006 ). Research that investigates the relationship of law and legal practices to population health falls within PHLR when it investigates health effects or otherwise deploys an explicit population health framework, whether or not the law on its face is oriented toward health. We label this important category of PHLR “incidental public health law.”

Finally, PHLR is distinguishable from other kinds of public health research in that it evaluates not merely the effectiveness of a public health intervention but also the effectiveness of law as the tool used to implement or facilitate the intervention. For example, research on whether abstinence-only education reduces teenage pregnancy is not PHLR merely because abstinence-only education happens to be required by law. PHLR does, however, encompass research on how abstinence-only education rules are implemented ( Sonfield and Gold 2001 ) and whether the existence of state-level, abstinence-only legal mandates is associated with differences in states’ reproductive health outcomes.

Health Services Research and Public Health Systems and Services Research

Relationships between PHLR and several contiguous domains of empirical research are useful to delineate. Access to health care is an important determinant of population health, and health care is widely acknowledged to be a key component of the public health system ( IOM 2003 ). The study of how law affects population health through the mediating structure of the health care system falls squarely within the definition of PHLR. PHLR therefore overlaps with the field of health services research (HSR), “the multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, and personal behaviors affect access to health care, the quality and cost of health care, and ultimately our health and well-being” ( Academy Health 2009 ). The impact of law on racial disparities in cardiac care outcomes, for example, is an important question for both HSR and PHLR.

The area of overlap, however, is limited to research that focuses on law as an independent variable and on population health (or an intermediate outcome with a well-demonstrated relationship to population health) as the outcome of interest. Research is not PHLR if it examines only the impact of some element of health care organization, financing, or delivery on health, without an important connection to law—for example, a study of the effect of capitated reimbursement in private managed care plans on the use of branded drugs.

Public health systems and services research (PHSSR) is an emerging field of study that “examines the organization, financing, and delivery of public health services within communities and the impact of those services on public health” ( Scutchfield 2009 , 169). PHLR overlaps with PHSSR to the extent that law is an important factor in the organization of public health systems and agencies and the delivery of public health services ( Henry, Scutchfield, and Pérez 2008 ; Pérez and Larkin 2009 ). A study of racial disparities in the use of involuntary civil commitment, an important legal tool for public health, could be considered both PHSSR and PHLR to the extent it focuses on how the organization or operation of civil commitment influences the outcomes the system produces ( Swanson et al. 2009 ). Conversely, PHSSR that examines the flow of resources to and within the public health system ( Mays and Smith 2009 ), although it might well inform PHLR on the implementation of a legal intervention, would not itself be PHLR.

One feature of PHLR not shared by PHSSR or HSR is its consideration of incidental public health law, that is, the effects on population health of law, agencies, and private actors not commonly understood to be pursuing a public health mission. For instance, a growing body of cross-disciplinary research centers on the effects of criminal laws and the practices of criminal justice agencies, such as the police, on the spread of communicable disease ( Burris et al. 2004 ). Research on this topic would fall under PHLR but not HSR or PHSSR.

A Logic Model of PHLR

A wide range of laws and legal practices affects the health of the population in cities, counties, states, and nations. Cataloging all such possible effects of law is impossible, and any schema for organizing such effects is characterized by trade-offs and simplifications. Nevertheless, the field of PHLR is advanced by a shared understanding of the range of possible effects of laws, and potential mechanisms for such effects, encompassed within the field.

The range of studies that empirically evaluate the effects of law on population health is depicted in figure 1 . Generally, the independent variable in PHLR is some aspect of lawmaking, laws, or the activities of legal agents. These will be studied in relation to dependent variables that can be arrayed along the presumed causal chain that includes key mediators as well as the distal or ultimate outcomes of interest: population morbidity and mortality.

Logic Model of Public Health Law Research.

First are studies of policymaking, the factors that influence which laws are enacted and that shape the specific characteristics of the statutes and regulations adopted (path A in figure 1 ). In these studies, public health laws (or judicial decisions) themselves are the outcome variables, and political and other jurisdictional characteristics are often the main explanatory variables tested.

Paths B and C examine the principal mediators in the causal chain linking laws and health outcomes. Studies of legal practices (path B) focus on the implementation or enforcement of the law on the books, including how the law affects the structure or operation of various regulatory systems. Laws may vary considerably in how well they are implemented; for example, whether a legal mandate for health education in schools translates into all pupils receiving the education that legislators envisioned may depend critically on the appropriation attached to the bill. There are opportunities and resources for litigation in some matters and not others. Unfunded mandates, unclear statutory provisions, the failure to identify an administrative agency responsible for issuing implementing guidelines and overseeing the rollout of the new legal provisions, lack of political commitment, and many other factors may undermine implementation. Similarly, laws may induce varying levels of compliance by the regulated entities or population, depending on the degree of political resistance, the extent to which the administering agency is armed with effective enforcement mechanisms, the litigation environment, and many other factors. The completeness of implementation and the effectiveness of mechanisms for ensuring compliance with the law are critical elements influencing the law's effect on health outcomes. Legal practices studies explore these influences as mediators of the statute or regulation's impact on health.

Path C involves the study of the law's effects (as implemented through legal practices) on environments and health behaviors. We use the term environment broadly to refer to both the physical environment and social structures and institutions. Laws and their implementation affect social institutions and environments by creating or reducing opportunities, increasing or decreasing available resources, expanding or reducing rights and obligations, and creating incentives and penalties. Even private institutions, such as corporations or the family, are deeply influenced by law. Research in this area examines these mechanisms of influence and how they shape the conditions for people to be healthy.

Law may affect health behaviors both directly and by shifting the environmental conditions that make particular behavioral choices more or less attractive (path D). For example, land-use laws may determine where supermarkets and restaurants are located, affecting the availability of healthy food options and the healthfulness of the local residents’ diet. Ultimately, changes in environments and behaviors lead to changes in population-level morbidity and mortality (path E).

PHLR may examine health outcomes directly, or it may use mediating environmental and behavioral changes as proxy outcome variables. While directly measuring health effects is generally desirable because it provides more information to policymakers about the public health returns to lawmaking, a focus on mediating factors is often appropriate. For example, laws designed to improve rates of immunization with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine might best be evaluated for their effects on the prevalence and burden of cervical cancer, but the time horizon for observing such effects is around forty years. Consequently, measuring rates of HPV vaccinations is a reasonable intermediate measure.

PHLR in Practice

The contours of PHLR as a distinct field are only beginning to emerge. Based on the existing scholarship in the field and the conceptual model we have described, table 1 shows a typology of the principal forms of PHLR studies. In this section, we describe the major methodological approaches relevant to studying each of the paths described.

Typology of Public Health Law Studies

Policymaking Studies

Studies of policymaking processes are a mainstay of political science and sociology. They explore issues such as the determinants of legislative, administrative, and judicial lawmaking ( Law 2005 ; McDougall 1997 ; Waters and Moore 1990 ); lawmaking processes ( Rosenberg 1991 ); and stakeholders’ use of law to achieve their goals ( McCann 1994 ). Although in broad terms, the policy process does not vary by topic area, health policymaking has generated a substantial research literature focusing on how generic policymaking processes unfold in a health context. This literature treats policymaking processes as among the legal practices affecting the potential for law to promote health.

Advocacy groups have traditionally been crucial instigators of health law, and researchers of “legal mobilization” have studied how advocates have integrated legislation and litigation into their strategies ( Ashe et al. 2003 ; Mamudu and Glantz 2009 ). The relative advantages of litigation versus legislative approaches have been investigated empirically and debated in public health law (PHL) scholarship ( Jacobson and Soliman 2002 ; Jacobson and Warner 1999 ; Parmet and Daynard 2000 ; Wagenaar 2007 ), as have the factors influencing legislative outcomes and the legislative process ( Backstrom and Robins 1995 ; Corrigan et al. 2005 ). Of particular interest to PHLR are studies examining how research evidence influences policymakers ( Cochrane Collaboration 2009 ; Innvaer et al. 2002 ; Jewell and Bero 2008 ; Lavis, Oxman, et al. 2008 ). Other work has looked at the behavior and strategies of policy actors, for example, how they use devices such as preemption and litigation to shift policy battles into forums where they have a greater chance of success ( Jacobson and Wasserman 1999 ), how community organizations may be brought more effectively into the lawmaking or law enforcement process ( Markell and Tyler 2008 ), and how consulting can be used to more effectively translate research knowledge for policymakers ( Jacobson, Butterill, and Goering 2005 ). There has been growing interest in the question of how model laws are developed for public health purposes, and whether and under what circumstances model legislation is more likely than other proposals to be enacted ( Hartsfield, Moulton, and McKie 2007 ).

Both quantitative and qualitative methods may be appropriate for policymaking studies. Econometric analysis is useful for examining the extent to which various observable characteristics of a state or local government—such as the political party in control of the legislature and the health status of the population—predict the likelihood that a particular kind of law will pass. For example, researchers have used multivariate regression to examine predictors of state legislative action on childhood obesity ( Boehmer et al. 2008 ; Cawley and Liu 2008 ). Such research may make important contributions by identifying “friendly” venues for experimentation with new public health law approaches and suggesting strategies for spreading successful policies to other jurisdictions.

For obtaining a rich understanding of the policymaking process, qualitative methods are unmatched. Interview methods are commonly and effectively used to understand the factors that lead policymakers to take or fail to take particular actions. Researchers have, for instance, conducted interviews with state legislators and their staff to study those factors enabling and inhibiting the passage of obesity prevention laws ( Dodson et al. 2009 ). Content analysis is another useful method of exploring political deliberations that occur “on the record,” for example, legislative hearings and debate concerning particular public health issues or legislation, and the notice-and-comment process of administrative agency rule making. Researchers have used content analysis to explore, for example, the use of evidence and argumentation in debates over workplace smoking legislation ( Apollonio and Bero 2009 ; Bero et al. 2001 ). Although it may be difficult to generalize the results of qualitative studies across jurisdictions, the high-resolution picture of the policymaking environment that they provide can have great value in formulating strategies for advancing evidence-based public health law.

Mapping Studies

PHLR includes studies that gather purely legal data for empirical purposes: information about the prevalence and distribution of specific laws ( Gostin et al. 1996 ; Hodge et al. 2008 ), what levels of government have relevant authority ( Horlick, Beeler, and Linkins 2001 ), and variations in the characteristics of the law across jurisdictions and over time ( CDC 1999 ; Chriqui et al. 2008 ; Shaw et al. 2007 ; Wells, Williams, and Fields 1989 ). Methods may include content analysis of legal texts (laws, regulations, court decisions, etc.), qualitative research designed to elicit information from officials and others who are knowledgeable about the state of the law, or a combination of the two approaches ( Horlick, Beeler, and Linkins 2001 ). Although no independent/dependent variable relationship is studied, these studies can be scientific—and therefore fall within the field of PHLR—if they involve the systematic collection and analysis of data using replicable methods.

Mapping studies often contribute information that is useful in its own right—state and local policymakers are keen to know what other jurisdictions are doing and what they might consider borrowing or learning from policy experiments in other jurisdictions. Mapping studies, however, are typically an early phase of larger projects designed to evaluate the magnitude and nature of the effects of laws on health. Properly conducted, they provide for the reliable and valid measurement of the key explanatory variable(s) in such studies. Thus, a rigorously conducted mapping study follows a systematic review protocol. It specifies a definition of the type of law being investigated, perhaps with explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria; a search methodology that acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses of extant databases; and a coding scheme identifying the main features of the laws, such as the population covered and enforcement mechanisms specified ( Tremper, Thomas, and Wagenaar 2010 ). They may also characterize laws according to some overall scale of stringency, scope, or strength through transparent and reproducible means. For example, a recent mapping study of state laws regulating sales of sugar-sweetened beverages in schools coded laws according to seven substantive features and eight process features and then grouped the laws into “strong,” “moderate,” and “weak” categories ( Mello, Pomeranz, and Moran 2008 ). We stress that analysis of this kind, though essential to empirical legal research, does not exhaust legal scholarship on laws, eliminate the serious challenges often entailed in interpreting what the law “is,” or replace serious discussion of what the law ought to be.

Implementation Studies

For a law to be effective, its implementation must be such that it will actually influence the behavior of its targets. The process of putting a law into practice can be understood in terms of a series of mediating factors, including the attitudes, management methods, capacities, and resources of implementing agencies and their agents; the methods and extent of enforcement; the relationship between the legal rules and broader community norms; and the attitudes and other relevant characteristics of the population whose behavior is targeted for influence. The text of the law and the resources appropriated for its enforcement constrain, but do not eliminate, the discretion of bureaucratic entities to reshape the rules to fit their existing culture and mission ( Deflem 2004 ).

Implementation research classically starts with investigating the “transformation process” that occurs along path B in figure 1 , the differences between the goals and methods of the law as explicitly or implicitly contemplated in the “law on the books,” and the “law on the streets” actually put into practice by legal agents charged with enforcing the law ( Percy 1989 ). Case studies or other analyses of how health agencies have organized their mission or performed in a given mission are a common form of implementation research ( Buehler, Whitney, and Berkelman 2006 ) and often investigate what legal powers an agency had or how it used them ( Lawson and Xu 2007 ). Creative compliance and outright resistance by the targets of regulation also may be studied ( Nakkash and Lee 2009 ). Implementation research in PHLR includes studies of the relationship among “legal infrastructure,” legal or other competencies, and agency function ( Kimball et al. 2008 ). Such studies may explore the effects of law on private agencies operating under a legal authorization, such as the effect of legal authorization on syringe-exchange programs ( Bluthenthal et al. 2007 ). Implementation researchers also measure proximate outcomes of new rules that may provide an early indication of their true behavioral effects, like the actual speeds observed on highways after a change in the nominal speed limit ( Retting and Cheung 2008 ).

Research on legal practices in PHLR may investigate the means through which systems may be better governed or regulation better designed in order to achieve their goals. Although it has as yet had little impact on PHLR, the study of techniques of regulation and governance has become an important part of empirical legal research and scholarship ( Ayres and Braithwaite 1992 ; Croley 2008 ; Moran 2002 ; Rhodes 1997 ). For nearly three decades, regulation in the United States and many other developed countries has exhibited an increasing pluralism, not just in spreading regulatory functions beyond government to private parties and public-private hybrids ( Burris, Kempa, and Shearing 2008 ; Lobel 2004 ; Osborne and Gaebler 1993 ), but also in using a wide range of strategies beyond detailed rules backed by carrots and sticks ( Parker and Braithwaite 2003 ). Contemporary regulators use cooperation, deliberation, education, competition, and other “soft” strategies that can be more effective than traditional command-and-control bureaucracy ( Lobel 2004 ). Theory and research in governance have highlighted the importance of actors outside government—such as advocacy groups, corporations, and gangs—in managing the course of events in social systems and have investigated how these actors regulate governments and one another ( Buse and Lee 2005 ; Scott 2002 ).

New regulatory and governance approaches have raised a fascinating range of empirical questions, from the use of the audit as a compliance tool ( Power 1997 ) to the design and effectiveness of public/private and self-governing regulatory structures ( Gunningham 2009 ; Ostrom 2005 ). This work resonates with research in behavioral law and economics, captured in Sunstein and Thaler's Nudge , which describes how regulators can creatively structure options to systematically influence behavior by means other than simple legal rules ( Sunstein and Thaler 2008 ).

Because so much regulation is now conducted outside traditional bureaucratic frameworks (and indeed outside government), scholars working in this area begin with a generic definition of regulation and its constituent elements. “Regulation” is the “sustained and focused attempt to alter the behaviour of others according to defined standards or purposes in order to address a collective issue or resolve a collective problem” ( Black 2008 , 139). It uses a combination of basic strategies of control, including standard setting, monitoring, and enforcement ( Scott 2001 ). The use of these strategies can be studied without regard to the particular mode through which the regulatory task is accomplished or what sort of entity is performing it ( Braithwaite and Drahos 2000 ). This analytic approach allows researchers both to better capture the regulatory role of actors outside traditional regulatory agencies—for example, the role of Mothers Against Driving Drunk in fostering stronger social norms condemning drunk driving—and to offer more creative approaches to regulation, as exemplified by Nudge and other works of behavioral law and economics ( Lobel and Amir 2009 ).

Although research in regulation and governance has been limited in public health law ( Biradavolu et al. 2009 ; Burris 2008 ; Trubek 2006 ), its applicability is clear ( Magnusson 2009 ). Public health services are provided by a diversity of public and private actors, and private entities play an important role in practicing and promoting standards of healthy behavior and health-promoting practices ( IOM 2003 ). We recognize that complex systems like health care cannot simply be managed by top-down rules but require the use of many flexible tools, like professional self-regulation, ethics, accreditation, collaborative and deliberative decision making, continuous quality improvement, and market incentives ( Braithwaite, Healy, and Dwan 2005 ; Berwick and Brennan 1995 ; Lobel 2004 ; Trubek 2006 ). Health governance around the world has been dramatically altered by the rise of new public/private hybrid institutions like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the enormous wealth of the Gates Foundation; and the consolidation of authority over national health, safety, and intellectual property law in the World Trade Organization ( Hein, Burris, and Shearing 2009 ; McCoy and Hilson 2009 ). The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is a typical instance of the “soft law” approach, setting broad goals for national action but minimizing binding rules in favor of deliberation and flexibility. Legal scholarship has begun to explore the “constitutional” implications of these structural changes ( Fidler 2004 ), but they have not been extensively investigated in PHLR.

Intervention Studies

Intervention studies evaluate the intended and incidental effects of legal interventions on health outcomes or key mediating factors that drive health outcomes. They may focus on “law on the books”—for example, examining the effect of states’ passage of graduated drivers license statutes on rates of injury-causing crashes ( Foss, Feaganes, and Rodgman 2001 )—or on legal practices, such as the effect of issuing restraining orders against perpetrators of domestic violence on future victimization ( Harrell and Smith 1996 ). Intervention studies can be used to evaluate interventional health law but also to investigate the health effects of public health's legal infrastructure and the unplanned impact of what we have called incidental public health law. Intervention studies lie at the heart of PHLR, as they most directly address the core question of the field: What are the best legal tools to use to promote health?

Intervention studies can draw from an extensive methodological tool kit ( table 1 ). The strongest designs are experimental or quasi-experimental designs with careful controls. Differences in how and when laws are implemented from jurisdiction to jurisdiction provide opportunities for quasi-experimental studies, although sophisticated methods may be required to account for other ways in which jurisdictions may differ from one another. Useful study designs and analytical methods for this purpose can be borrowed from the fields of econometrics and epidemiology ( Ludwig and Cook 2000 ). Real-world, randomized experiments are extremely rare but have been employed to study judicial-branch reforms such as specialized courts ( Gottfredson, Najaka, and Kearley 2003 ). Experimental studies can also be carried out using simulations, such as tabletop exercises ( Dausey, Buehler, and Lurie 2007 ; Hupert, Mushlin, and Callahan 2002 ; Lurie et al. 2004 ).

We already have a substantial evidence base investigating the effectiveness of interventional public health law, ranging from single studies through literature reviews to meta-analyses and systematic reviews conducted by entities like the Campbell Collaboration ( Campbell Collaboration 2009 ) and the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services ( Community Guide 2009 ). We also have a rich, if less well organized, research literature on incidental public health law. For example, researchers have studied the unintended consequences of HIV reporting laws on attitudes toward testing, time of testing, and willingness to be tested ( Hecht et al. 2000 ; Tesoriero et al. 2008 ). Research on the health effects of infrastructural health law has been more limited.

Consistent with ecological models in public health, intervention studies may investigate how laws influence health by changing environments. For example, zoning rules, clean indoor air laws, and laws regulating the condition of rental properties can directly shape residents’ exposures to noise, environmental toxins, and stress, as well as their activity patterns, social connections, collective efficacy, and many other factors that appear to influence population health outcomes ( Browning and Cagney 2002 ; Maantay 2002 ; Schilling and Linton 2005 ). Occupational health and safety laws affect workers’ exposure to hazardous conditions on the job. Product regulations protect consumers from a range of hazards arising from the use of products, from herbal supplements to firearms ( Larsen and Berry 2003 ; Robson 2007 ; Vernick and Teret 2000 ).

Interventional research focuses not only on how the law changes physical environments, but also on how it may change the social environment in ways that affect health or health behaviors. Law may shape people's health knowledge and attitudes, the way they perceive the risks and benefits of different choices, the frames through which they view particular choices, and the social norms against which their health decisions are set. PHLR can measure any or all of these dependent variables, as well as changes in health behaviors. There are many examples: research on the effects of indoor smoking prohibitions on social expectations about exposure to secondhand smoke in public ( Kagan and Skolnick 1993 ); the effect of laws requiring disclosure of calorie information on restaurant menus on consumers’ awareness of calorie content and attitudes toward the role of calorie information in food purchasing decisions ( Bassett et al. 2008 ); and the effect of punitive laws concerning substance abuse during pregnancy on the prenatal care–seeking behavior of pregnant women ( Poland et al. 1993 ), to name a few.

Finally, intervention research can illuminate policy choices under conditions of uncertainty. When problems or policy responses are new, there will naturally be little or no intervention research directly on point. Policymaking can still be informed by evidence about analogous policies or by an understanding of how law typically works to influence environments and behaviors, although all analogies are, of course, imperfect proxies for the situation at hand. An example is the area of legal restrictions on cell phone use by drivers. Although public health research recently has provided good evidence of the injury risk associated with this behavior, evidence of the effectiveness of different legal and policy approaches to the problem is not yet available. Until it is, lawmakers seeking to respond to what is clearly a significant health risk might be guided by the lessons learned about the design and enforcement of laws requiring seatbelt and helmet use and prohibiting driving under the influence of alcohol. Health impact assessment has also emerged as a useful way to use mixed methods to inform policy decisions with reliable data on possible effects, intended and unintended ( Collins and Koplan 2009 ; Lee et al. 2007 ; Mindell et al. 2004 ). Finally, Monte Carlo simulations, widely used in the field of decision science but rarely used in PHLR ( Studdert et al. 2007 ), offer an intriguing method for accounting for uncertainty about multiple parameters of importance to evaluating the likely effect of law.

Mechanism Studies

To advance the field, we need not only more evidence of law's health effects but also a greater understanding of how law has the effects it has. This is important for many reasons. Evidence of mechanisms strengthens specific causal claims. Understanding how a particular intervention influences environments and behavior facilitates the identification of further interventions, or of alternatives to eliminate superfluous requirements or unintended side effects and strengthen the mechanisms that are working. The better we understand how law works, the better we can use it, replicate its successes across jurisdictions, and extend its approach to other kinds of health risks. Informed by theories of health behavior, PHLR can develop and test models to explain how public health law effectuates change in health behaviors and ultimately health outcomes.

At the most basic level, laws encourage healthy, safe, and socially beneficial behaviors and discourage unhealthy, dangerous, and socially deleterious ones by shaping incentives (rewards) and deterrents (punishments). Though the theory may be simple, the process is not. Regulators have myriad levers and tactics that they can use to influence behavior directly or by manipulating the environment, and each choice in a regulatory system can and should be studied for its effectiveness, in both absolute terms and relative to less burdensome alternatives. Among the mechanisms are taxation and subsidies, changes in the information environment, changes in the built environment, and signals sent by tort litigation ( Gostin, Thompson, and Grad 2007 ).

With respect to laws imposing outright prohibitions on particular behaviors, many of the key research questions relate to mechanisms of implementation and enforcement: What penalties are applied to violators of legal rules? What processes are used to detect violators? With what degree of certainty and swiftness will sanctions ensue from a violation? Sociolegal research drawing on disciplines such as psychology, criminology, and sociology has a great deal to contribute to mechanism studies in PHLR. The psychological literature has explored contingencies of reinforcement; criminologists have fleshed out the factors influencing deterrence; and sociology research has plumbed the normative effects of standard setting. Tom Tyler's influential work, for example, has shown the importance of experiences of procedural fairness to compliance with the law ( Tyler 1990 ).

A classic example of compliance research in public health law is the investigation of primary versus secondary enforcement of seatbelt laws. Primary enforcement laws permit police to pull over motorists for not wearing a seatbelt, while secondary enforcement laws permit police to issue a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt only when the motorist has been pulled over for another reason. Because secondary enforcement relies primarily on social norms to enforce seatbelt use, with the threat of a ticket serving a greatly subordinate role, studies comparing these approaches to enforcement are essentially a test of the relative effectiveness of punishment versus social norms as a means of encouraging compliance ( Dinh-Zarr et al. 2001 ). Among the most interesting findings of this PHLR is that the relative benefits of primary enforcement laws varied across population subgroups, with the greatest marginal benefit observed for those groups with lower rates of seatbelt use, including males, young people, African Americans, and Native Americans ( Beck et al. 2007 ).

These and other studies make clear that deterrence is a complex phenomenon. The deterrent effect of law often seems to be assumed, without an appreciation of the factors influencing whether a person's behavior is influenced by a fear of detection or punishment. The threat of fines may have an effect different from the threat of jail ( Wagenaar et al. 2007 ). Deterrence may be weak or incomplete because people are ill informed about what the law requires, because they do not believe violation will result in a sanction, because they are insulated from the adverse effects of a sanction (e.g., by insurance coverage), or because the sanction is not strong enough to outweigh the perceived benefits of noncompliance with the law ( Mello and Brennan 2002 ). Uncertainty about legal standards can also have the opposite effect, leading to overcompliance in an attempt to avoid sanctions ( Mello et al. 2006 ). Mechanism studies can examine all these phenomena. Survey methods, interviews, focus groups, and formal decision analysis can be used to deconstruct how people think through the costs and benefits of different actions. Analysis of administrative data on enforcement actions can shed light on the degree to which popular perceptions reflect what actually happens when a law is violated.

Another variable of interest in mechanism studies that focus on compliance with legal rules is the perceived legitimacy of the body imposing the legal rule. Even people who are aware of the law may not trust “the system,” or they may see strategies other than compliance as more useful to them in achieving their goals ( Burris 1998 ). Studies of the perceived legitimacy of public health lawmakers and law enforcers may be particularly useful in understanding differences in compliance across population groups whose historical experience in the United States has led to different levels of trust in government.

Mechanism studies may also investigate how law shapes behavior in ways more subtle than outright prohibitions. How do regulatory tools such as taxes and subsidies, mandated disclosure or receipt of information, default rules, accreditation and certification, and delegations of authority to private institutions shape how individuals and organizations behave? When are these alternatives more effective and desirable than traditional, command-and-control regulation using rigid rules and penalties? For many of these forms of regulation, understanding the cognitive biases and heuristics that affect individual decision making about risk is critical ( Kahnemann, Slovic, and Tversky 1982 ), and empirical research can examine how these biases influence health outcomes.

PHLR takes a number of forms, each utilizing diverse methods ( table 1 ). By illuminating the paths we have delineated in our logic model, these forms each play important roles in establishing how law is being deployed to promote population health, and how and to what extent it is achieving its intended purpose.

Challenges Facing PHLR

We have argued that PHLR is a distinct and important field of research but that it faces a set of challenges shared with social research of other kinds. These include increasing methodological rigor, ensuring adequate research funding, identifying data sources, and ensuring the impact of PHLR on policy. We describe how each of these challenges takes shape in PHLR and explain why we are optimistic that they can be met.

Increasing Methodological Rigor

PHLR is part of a recent “explosion in empirical work” in law ( Pfaff 2009 ). Some investigators are concerned that legal scholars are producing empirical work faster than the field can create the mechanisms necessary to ensure its rigor ( Pfaff 2009 ). The fact that much PHLR is published in peer-reviewed health journals helps avoid one of the major problems confronting empirical legal studies more generally: the rarity of peer and expert editorial review in law journals. The further development of PHLR as a distinct field within empirical legal and public health research will be instrumental in defining and maintaining high standards of scientific rigor.

One challenge is how to draw new investigators with the right expertise into the field. Perhaps to a greater extent than other areas of empirical legal research, PHLR must grapple with how to integrate individuals who are primarily practitioners into the field. Their involvement in PHLR can improve research in many ways: practitioners bring an intimate knowledge of what the cutting-edge public health problems are and of the practical realities of policymaking and implementation, and they constitute a pipeline for putting research into practice. However, they typically lack both significant training in research methods and experience conducting empirical research. Similarly, even methodologically expert health researchers often lack any grounding in empirical legal scholarship, hampering their ability to conceptualize or measure legal influence on environments, behavior, or health outcomes.

The involvement of traditional legal scholars in PHLR raises similar challenges. Among the assets they bring to PHLR are a commitment to thinking deeply about the law's form, evolution, and function; the capacity for nuanced argument for or against particular legal approaches; and an appreciation of how social values and other normative considerations guide the law's path. Among the things they often lack are expertise in quantitative methods, an allegiance to the scientific method, and an inclination to think systematically about qualitative data collection and analysis.

These shortcomings can be surmounted through greater interdisciplinarity. Increasingly, law faculties are experiencing a “PhD-ification” ( Pfaff 2009 ), bringing aboard junior scholars dually trained in law and economics, political science, or another social science discipline. These scholars are well positioned to move from empirical legal studies generally to PHLR specifically. Even more promising is the trend toward pursuing PHLR in multidisciplinary teams. Research partnerships between practitioners and scholars represent the future of the best research in this field, and interdisciplinary collaborations of scholars will become the “standard of care” very soon. Team-based approaches preclude the need for traditional legal scholars and practitioners to climb the steep learning curve necessary to conduct highly rigorous quantitative and qualitative investigations. At a minimum, however, these scholars and practitioners should receive enough training in empirical methods to become informed consumers of empirical studies and active participants in team decisions about study design ( Lawless, Robbenholt, and Ulen 2010 ).

Another challenge relating to methodological rigor—one that cuts across fields of social science research—is how to adequately control for confounding variables in observational studies. This is particularly difficult in intervention studies that exploit cross-sectional variation in state laws, because states differ in so many other ways, many of which are not captured in data ( Mello and Zeiler 2008 ). Such studies are usually retrospective, relying on extant data rather than employing prospective designs that collect data on all important variables. Statistical techniques such as fixed-effects models and difference-in-difference models provide a means of minimizing this problem in repeated cross-section studies, although analysts need to carefully consider whether such designs are appropriate given the nature of their data. Prospective studies and studies involving original data collection are even stronger responses to this problem but are expensive, time-consuming, and not feasible for studying some public health law questions.

Yet another methodological challenge for the field is interpreting empirical findings. Empirical legal scholars have lamented the limited development of approaches to dealing with the problem of induction ( Epstein and King 2002 ). The field of epidemiology has developed and refined tools for evaluating when it is appropriate to draw causal inferences from statistical associations, but the same cannot be said for empirical legal studies ( Pfaff 2009 ). The temptation to infer causality from association, or even to infer association from observing a small, nonsystematic sample of actors or jurisdictions, has been problematic in PHLR. Here, PHLR can and should draw on epidemiology: Sir Austin Bradford Hill's classic work on indicators of causality in environment exposures and disease, for instance, is useful in a broad swath of observational work ( Hill 1965 ). Addressing the question, “What aspects of that association should we especially consider before deciding that the most likely interpretation of it is causation?” Bradford Hill listed strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, “biological gradient” (a dose-response relationship), biological plausibility, coherence with known facts, availability of experimental evidence, and availability of analogous phenomena.

As the factors inhibiting greater rigor are gradually overcome, PHLR will move from its current state, in which simple descriptive studies, nonsystematic qualitative work, and overly simplistic regression modeling are common, to a greater use of more sophisticated study designs. This process will be guided by the application of methodological standards developed in related fields of research. For example, the Society for Prevention Research has established criteria for judging whether laws and policies aimed at disease prevention are efficacious, effective, and ready for dissemination ( Flay et al. 2005 ). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has developed a rating system for the strength of evidence for preventive health measures provided by different types of study designs, ranging from case reports to randomized controlled trials ( Harris et al. 2001 ). The Campbell and Cochrane Collaborations are highly informative examples of how work in PHLR can be systematically evaluated and, through this evaluation, spurred to higher levels of rigor ( Campbell Collaboration 2009 ; Cochrane Collaboration 2009 ). The process will also be driven by the increasing extent to which PHLR scholars view themselves as a professional community engaged in stimulating, collaborating in, and critiquing one another's work. Ultimately, a clear professional identity for the field will emerge, and at its core will be a commitment to the disciplined application of the scientific method and the most sophisticated methodological approaches to study public health law questions.

Ensuring Adequate Research Funding

Collecting, analyzing, and communicating research data all cost money. Although the problem of securing research funding is not unique to PHLR, it poses special problems in this field because many public health law researchers work in soft-money environments, and extramural funding for PHLR is sparse. The recent commitment of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to building PHLR represents a milestone in the field's evolution. First through its overall public health law portfolio (which has also included support for policy-related initiatives like the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program, Healthy Eating Research, Active Living Research, and PHSSR) and now through its program in Public Health Law Research, RWJF has supported PHLR at an unprecedented level. Previously, researchers relied on small programs such as the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Science program and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) short-lived Public Health Law for research opportunities, or they tried to shoehorn legal research projects into health research solicitations, for example, the NIH's and the CDC's requests for proposals on drug addiction or injury prevention. While these attempts have often been successful, they have limited the researchers’ ability to address the core areas of inquiry of PHLR, and they have precluded ready identification of studies that constitute the PHLR literature across a wide array of health topics. The RWJF initiative thus will pay for research and also build the field of PHLR by stimulating new investigators to enter the field, bringing researchers together, signaling what constitutes rigor in the field, and gathering together PHLR studies across diverse topics and methods.

The question of sustainability does arise, however. A longer-term and more broad-based commitment by research sponsors is needed to support the field's continued flourishing. This is most likely to occur if public health law researchers spend time educating sponsors and policymakers as to the significance of the problems that the field addresses as well as researchers’ ability to provide useful, credible answers. Empirical research examining how research influences policy has emphasized the importance of the relationships between researchers and their audiences ( Lavis, Moynihan, et al. 2008 ). We hope that over time, law and policy studies will become seen as a core component of all public health research solicitations, in the way that ethics is increasingly viewed in the context of genomic, cancer, and other population health research.

Identifying Data Sources

Although a wide array of data sets on health risk exposures, health behaviors, and health outcomes are available, data on health laws are much harder to find ( Hadfield 2006 ; Heise 1999 ; Mello and Zeiler 2008 ). Unlike many other areas of public health research, research on public health law and policy has developed few surveillance systems ( Brownson et al. 2006 ; McGowan et al. 2003 ). Gathering information about the patterns of public health law adoption and implementation across states and local governments over time generally is done de novo in each research project.

Maintaining and updating databases of laws would dramatically improve researchers’ ability to conduct rigorous policymaking, mapping, intervention, implementation, and mechanism studies at low cost. High standards of transparency concerning the data-collection and coding protocols for such databases would allow subsequent researchers to update publicly available data sets at reasonable marginal cost. In the few instances in which such databases have been made available—for example, Ronen Avraham's contribution of a database of state tort reforms, funded by the National Science Foundation ( Avraham 2006 )—researchers have quickly made them the gold standard source of data in that area of research.

Such examples point to three steps that would help bridge the data gap in PHLR. First, research sponsors need to provide funding to compile databases. Second, database architects need to develop and share systematic protocols for finding and classifying relevant laws and regulations. These protocols are best developed in consultation with other researchers in the field so that definitions and typologies are widely recognized as appropriate and suitable for use in other studies. Third, databases need to be made publicly available and easy to locate online.

A final step that would contribute to the available data resources for PHLR is better linkages between researchers and public and private holders of relevant data. Hospitals and clinics, public health agencies, insurance companies, and product manufacturers are just some of the entities that hold a treasure trove of data relevant to PHLR. Building trust with these data holders, so that they feel confident that the information they share will be appropriately safeguarded and research findings responsibly reported, takes time and care but is well worth the effort. The widespread adoption of standard protocols for using, protecting, and reporting proprietary data could help establish trust, but much will remain dependent on carefully cultivated personal relationships.

Promoting Policymakers’ Use of PHLR Findings

The greatest challenge confronting PHLR is an all-too-common one in research: rigorous research may be relevant to policy in theory but too often is neither salient nor useful to policymakers and advocates in practice. The elements of the problem are well documented. Researchers are often isolated from the policy process and disconnected from policymakers and public health practitioners, making it difficult for them to identify salient topics for study and to produce knowledge that can both respond to policymakers’ concerns and drive policy agendas toward evidence-based innovation ( Brownson, Chriqui, and Stamatakis 2009 ). Academics tend to follow their own interests and, in policymakers’ eyes, often do not successfully anticipate where policy agendas will be in the short and medium terms ( Jewell and Bero 2008 ). Rigorous research—not to mention peer review and publication—takes time, but policy actors need information when they need it. Even when results are available, a lack of understanding of policymakers’ perspectives, time constraints, and level of scientific literacy hampers researchers’ ability to craft research reports that are likely to be read and understood by the policy and practice communities ( Jewell and Bero 2008 ). For their part, policymakers report being overwhelmed by the volume of information presented to them, particularly the quantity of dense, detailed material ( Sorian and Baugh 2002 ). State legislators face particular challenges owing to their lack of research training, the breadth of issues about which they must become knowledgeable, the short timelines involved, the high turnover of legislators and legislative staff, and the leanness of legislators’ staff and resources ( Jewell and Bero 2008 ).

Solutions, like the problems, are not unique to PHLR ( Greenhalgh et al. 2004 ; Mitton et al. 2007 ). Transferring knowledge from research to policy generally requires careful attention to a set of key questions: What is the precise information to be transmitted? Who exactly are the targets? Who are the best messengers? What media can most effectively be used to transfer the knowledge? For what purposes, exactly, is the information likely to be used ( Lavis et al. 2003 )?

Commentators emphasize the importance of ongoing contact between research producers and research consumers ( Innvaer et al. 2002 ; Lavis, Moynihan, et al. 2008 ). Systematic reviews are repeatedly identified as an effective strategy for distilling a large amount of evidence into a usable form ( Community Guide 2009 ; Fielding and Briss 2006 ; Jewell and Bero 2008 ; Lavis et al. 2003 ; Moulton et al. 2009 ; RWJF 2009 ; Sweet and Moynihan 2007 ). Policy briefs and other translational materials should be geared to the recipient and should “concretize impact”—that is, delineate specific benefits, harms, and costs, including the specific populations affected, and how particular policy strategies can alter them ( Jewell and Bero 2008 ; Sorian and Baugh 2002 ). Nor does the entire responsibility lie with researchers. Effective practices have also been identified for organizations engaged in knowledge transfer ( Lavis, Oxman, et al. 2008 ).

Training and mentorship within the field can move PHLR toward these practices, as can hands-on experience when researchers spend time working in policy settings. But there are no panaceas here. Even when research findings are effectively communicated to policymakers, a variety of forces can get in the way of policymakers' ability and willingness to translate evidence into policy proposals. Among these are the influence of interest groups, the power of anecdotes that contradict research findings, force of habit, cultural norms and values, and political compromises and expediency ( Brownson, Chriqui, and Stamatakis 2009 ; Brownson et al. 2006 ; Jewell and Bero 2008 ).

At some level, there is little that researchers can do to overcome these forces. Nonetheless, well-designed translational materials and strategies that reflect an understanding of the constraints that policymakers face certainly have a greater chance of carrying the day than do research reports that are physically and cognitively inaccessible to policymakers. In addition, building strong relationships with public health law practitioners can help ensure that researchers and their work are responsive to practitioners’ needs. When the streams of problem, policy, and politics merge, events often move quickly ( Brownson, Chriqui, and Stamatakis 2009 ). Policy actors thus need answers to specific questions when the time is right for them, not when it serves the needs of funding, peer-reviewed publication, and promotion. As a field, PHLR must be dedicated to both the long-term work that builds a rigorous evidence base for policy and to a practice of “translational service.” The latter includes maintaining contact with policy actors, pursuing models of scholarship that can generate answers on a policy-relevant timeline (such as synthesizing existing evidence and applying it to current issues, or conducting simulation studies), and taking time from academic pursuits to serve as consultants ( Fielding and Briss 2006 ; Jacobson, Butterill, and Goering 2005 ). In the long run, all participants in PHLR—researchers, funders, consumers—have to work to narrow the gap between research that is fundable and research that is needed, and to invest in knowledge translation for its own sake. None of this is peculiar to PHLR, but researchers in this emerging field can aspire to be exemplary in their efforts, attending to and putting into practice the insights of research on translating evidence into policy.

Conclusions

Lawyers have long proclaimed the maxim that “the health of the people is the supreme law,” but in practice, making law work for public health is a constant challenge. PHLR's contribution is to provide the evidentiary foundation for these efforts. Through policymaking studies, PHLR can identify forces that shape public health policy and strategies for effecting policy change. Mapping studies can show what has been done and thus what kind of action various government units can take. Through implementation studies, PHLR can provide information about how best to ensure that “law on the books” becomes effective “law on the streets.” Through intervention studies, it can determine which legal approaches are most efficacious in improving health environments, behaviors, and outcomes and can identify harmful legal side effects. Finally, PHLR mechanism studies can tell us why laws have the effects they do, and what mechanisms we can use to improve the effectiveness of legal interventions.

Although researchers carrying out this work and collectively advancing this vision face significant challenges, a combination of forces has brought us closer to meeting these challenges than ever before. The interest of research sponsors, the broader trend toward interdisciplinary research, the increasing number of legal scholars trained in social science disciplines, and signals from Washington that policy will increasingly be driven by evidence and expertise are all cause for optimism ( Obama 2009 ).

A recent posting on a law professor's blog raised the question of “whether empiricism is a methodology or a philosophy” ( Lipshaw 2009 ). We argue it is both. We urge scholars of public health law to explore and recognize the value of empirical methods. We also hope that scholars and policymakers will adopt the philosophy that evidence derived from rigorous research ought to inform, if not drive, health policy decisions. Through the production of knowledge and conscientious efforts to translate research findings for decision makers, PHLR can make the case for laws that improve health.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Evan Anderson for his assistance in preparing this article; and Angie McGowan, Prabhu Ponkshe, F. Douglas Scutchfield, and The Milbank Quarterly 's reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. The authors' work was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The opinions expressed in this article are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the view of the foundation.

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Health Law Research Guide: Suggested Topics in Health Law

• Suggested Topics in Health Law
• Online Resources
• Westlaw and Lexis
• Legislative Histories
• Major Health Laws & Regulations
• U.S. Code, Regulations, and Court Rules
• Pending Legislation
• Legislative Reports
• New York State Department of Health Guidance Memoranda/Documents
• Journals/Newsletters/Blogs
• International Declarations
• Conventions
• Resources on International Health Law
• International Policy Briefs and Reports
• Online Books and Reports
• Open Access International Journals & Newsletters
• Legislative Information and Reports
• State Health Data
• Uniform Laws
• Books Online
• Dictionaries and Glossaries
• General Reference Sources
• Indexes and Search Engines
• Pace University Databases
• PubMed and Medline
• Research Guides
• Bar Associations
• Federal Agencies
• International Agencies and Organizations
• Medical Associations
• National Agencies and Organizations
• New York State Agencies and Organizations
• Professional Associations
• State Agencies
• Print Resources
• Current Awareness

Listed below are some suggested topics in Health Law; they are linked to the Pace University library catalog.  Books may be borrowed using your Pace ID card.  Please see a reference librarian for more information. 

Suggested Topics in Health Law (A-G)

• Abortion--Law and Legislation
• AIDS (Disease)
• Allied Health Personnel
• Assisted Suicide
• Bioterrorism
• Children with Disabilities
• Communicable Diseases
• Community Health Services
• Developmentally Disabled
• Discrimination in Medical Care
• Donation of Organs, Tissues, etc.
• Drinking Water
• Dual Diagnosed
• Emergency Medical Services
• Environmentally Induced Diseases
• Epidemiology
• Food Adulteration and Inspection
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Genetic Engineering

Suggested Topics in Health Law (H-I)

• Health Care Reform
• Health Decision Making
• Health Disparities
• Health Facilities--Law and Legislation
• Health Insurance
• Health Maintenance Organizations
• Health Risk Assessment
• Health Services Administration
• HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)
• Human Experimentation in Medicine
• Human Reproduction
• Informed Consent
• Insanity (Law)
• Insurance, Mental Health
• Insurance, Physicians' Liability

Suggested Topics in Health Law (M-N)

• Medical Care--Law and Legislation
• Medical Emergencies
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Jurisprudence
• Medical Laws and Legislation
• Medical Personnel
• Medical Personnel--Malpractice
• Medical Policy
• Medical Records--Law and Legislation
• Medical Tourism
• Medicare--Law and Legislation
• Medicine, Preventive
• Medicine--Philosophy
• Mental Health Facilities
• Mental Health Laws
• Mental Health Personnel
• Mental Illness
• Mentally Handicapped Children
• Mentally Ill
• Mentally Ill Offenders
• Neonatology

Suggested Topics in Health Law (P-Z)

• Physicians--Malpractice
• Psychiatric Hospitals
• Psychiatrists--Malpractice
• Public Health
• Public Health Administration
• Public Health Laws
• Public Health Personnel
• Right to Die
• Rural Health
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases
• Slaughtering and Slaughterhouses
• Stem Cell Research
• Telemedicine
• Tort Liability of Hospitals
• Transplantation of Organs and Tissues
• War--Medical Aspects
• Water--Fluoridation
• World Health
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• Next: Online Resources >>
• Last Updated: Apr 1, 2024 11:37 AM
• URL: https://libraryguides.law.pace.edu/healthlaw

Health Law Research

Secondary sources, primary sources, practice materials, organizations, interdisciplinary materials, getting help.

This guide provides an overview of health law research strategies. It will highlight some of the key secondary and primary resources in these areas. It will also provide current awareness sources. To learn more about performing legal research generally, please visit:

• Legal Research Strategy by AJ Blechner Last Updated Sep 21, 2023 7490 views this year

Health law has become a distinct field in its own right. However, researchers may also wish to explore:  Bioethics, Health Care Policy & Reform, Medical Device Law & Industry, Medical Malpractice, Medicare/Medicaid, Pharmaceutical Law & Industry, and Public Health. For a brief summary of health law please visit:

• Health Law: An Overview Cornell Legal Information Institute

Using Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are a great place to begin your research.  To learn more about secondary sources and how to use them, visit the following guide:

• Secondary Sources: ALRs, Encyclopedias, Law Reviews, Restatements, & Treatises by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 4767 views this year

Encyclopedias & American Law Reports

Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics. They provide introductions to legal topics and explain relevant terms of art. State encyclopedias can also be found on Westlaw and Lexis.

• American Jurisprudence 2d - Health - Westlaw
• American Jurisprudence 2d - Health - Lexis
• Corpus Juris Secundum - Health and Environment - Westlaw
• Lawyers' Medical Cyclopedia of Personal Injuries and Allied Specialties

The American Law Reports contains in-depth articles on narrow topics of the law.  Use the following Indices to access the ALR.  Note: Lexis also has some ALR materials but Westlaw's are more complete.

• Health Index Topic - ALR - Westlaw
• Medical Care Index Topic - ALR - Westlaw

Health Law Treatises

There are many health law treatises within our collection.  Users can search in Hollis  for the most up-to-date legal treatises.

• Hollis, the Harvard Library Catalog

Explore books by topic: Select Option Below Show All General Administration Bioethics & Biotechnology Mental Health Pandemic Response Policy Public Health

Books - General

Books - Administration

Books - Bioethics & Biotechnology

Books - Mental Health

Books - Pandemic Response

Books - Policy

Books - Public Health

Legal and Medical Journals

In addition to Hollis, mentioned above, many databases can be used for secondary source research:

• HeinOnline Health and Medicine
• Lexis Healthcare Law Journals
• Westlaw Health Law Journals

In addition to traditional law reviews and journals many advocacy organizations also publish:

• American Health Law Association Seminar Papers For papers prior to 2009 visit the American Health Law Association Seminar Papers - Archive
• American Journal of Law & Medicine by the American Society of Law and Medicine
• Food and Drug Law Journal by the Food and Drug Law Institute
• Internet Journal of Law, Healthcare and Ethics by Internet Scientific Publications
• Issues in Law & Medicine by the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent & Disabled
• Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics
• Journal of Legal Medicine by the American College of Legal Medicine

Using Primary Sources

Primary authority is  "authority that issues directly from a law-making body." Authority , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).  To learn more about primary sources and how to use them visit:

• Primary Sources - Legal Research Strategy Guide
• Health Law Statutes - Westlaw
• Healthcare Law Statutes - Lexis
• State Health Statutes - LII Table of state codes on health law, for general use only, not citation.

Statutes & Legislation

50 State Surveys are tools used to compare the law across multiple states.  To learn more about using and accessing 50 State Surveys see our guide on:

• Comparing State Law - Prepare to Practice Guide

Comparing State Law

For 50 State Surveys on Health Law visit:

• 50 State Surveys - Health - Westlaw
• 50 State Surveys - COVID19 - Westlaw
• 50 State Surveys Healthcare, Public Health, & Welfare Law - Lexis
• State by State Guide to Managed Care Law

Legislative History

• Federal & State Legislative History by Mindy Kent Last Updated Apr 18, 2024 365 views this year

This may help when considering the impact of Federal and State statutes related to health. Consider searching for earlier versions of the law, supporting testimony, and additional documentation. If available, consider consulting published legislative history.

• A Legislative history of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and its Amendments.
• Legislative History of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996
• Legislative History of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003
• Legislative History of the Social Security Amendments of 1965
• Legislative History of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
• ProQuest Regulatory Insight Find regulations that have been promulgated as a result of the ACA.

If there is no existing legislative history, researchers may need to consult congressional materials directly.

Regulatory & Administrative Law

Regulations comprise a substantial portion of primary sources in health law research. Statutes may enable change in health policy (such as the Affordable Care Act) and create specific health programs (such as Medicare and Medicaid). Yet, the way those policies and programs are administered relies primarily on regulation.

If you are unfamiliar with how to conduct regulatory research, please visit:

• Administrative Law Research by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 587 views this year

The regulatory process can be complex, especially in the field of health care. Multiple agencies can be involved in promulgating regulations, further complicating the process. This visual overview can be helpful:

It may be easiest to start with a regulation by number or agency by name. Secondary sources such as books, scholarly articles, or advocacy communications can help you get started.

Government agencies websites provide information about proposed regulations and track them through the regulatory process.

• Federalregister.gov Contains federal agency documents, including proposed rules, final rules, public notices, and Presidential actions. This unofficial format provides the same material printed in the official Federal Register. It also contains related material from the Code of Federal Regulations and the US Code.
• Regulations.gov Allows users to search regulatory materials, submit comments, and sign up for email alerts. Some agencies require that comments be submitted through their own individual platforms. However, regulations.gov serves as a clearinghouse for the majority of publicly available public comment material.
• Reginfo.gov Produced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA). OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviews Federal regulations and information collections. The site provides information about regulations under development to enable public participation.

Administrative Materials are also accessible on both Westlaw and Lexis:

• Health Law Regulations - Westlaw
• Health Law Administrative Decisions & Guidance - Westlaw
• Healthcare Law Administrative Codes & Regulations - Lexis
• Healthcare Law Administrative Materials - Lexis

Agency websites also contain regulations and resources that can aid in conducting research:

• Health and Human Services Regulations
• Food & Drug Administration Regulations
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Regulations
• Federal & State Health Law Cases - Westlaw
• Federal & State Health Law Cases - Lexis

Some agencies can also decide cases related to particular regulations. These agency decisions may not be included in general case law databases. Decisions can often be accessed through agency websites:

• HHS Compliance - Advisory Opinions
• CMS Medicare Advantage/Prescription Drug Plan Decisions
• HHS Departmental Appeals Board Decisions
• HHS Enforcement Actions
• FDA Enforcement Reports
• FDA Warning Letters

Using Practice Materials

Practitioners often write the most helpful resources in the field of health law. Although they have similarities to treatises, they are directed at lawyers in practice. They may contain checklists and forms not available in a traditional treatise.

Practice Centers

• Healthcare Practice Center - Vitallaw
• Health Practice Center - Bloomberg Law
• Health Law Practice Center - Westlaw
• Medical Litigation Practice Center - Westlaw
• Healthcare Law Practice Center - Lexis

Practitioner Materials

Handbooks and guides are helpful when working on health law issues as a new practitioner.

• Health Law Handbook
• Health Care Compliance Guide - Bloomberg
• Health Law Practice Guide
• Health Care Law: A Practical Guide

Current Awareness Sources

Advocacy resources.

• POLITICO Pro PoliticoPro provides subject-based issue and policy tracking tools in multiple areas including Health Care. It prepares issue pages for major policy areas. Features include: news, calendar function, whiteboard, charts, graphs, and glossaries, all in well-organized practice centers. PoliticoPro content relies on policy experts in the field, writing in real time. The site also stores all primary source documents in a "document drawer" for easy access.
• Legistorm The In the News section curates news from Capitol Hill. StormFeed provides updates from press releases, twitter accounts from legislators, and relevant trending hashtags. For regular alerts request a personal account, contact [email protected].
• Vitallaw The Health Care library includes several Daily Documents and Newsletters. Researchers can also find CMS manuals and guidance, and State Health Care information.

News Sources

Keeping up-to-date with new developments in the field of health law will enhance research projects. Recent headlines in the field may also inspire researchers still looking for a paper topic. Use these links to find news sources related to health law:

• Kaiser Health News A nonprofit news service committed to in-depth coverage of health care policy and politics (not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente).
• Health Affairs A leading peer-reviewed journal of health policy thought and research. Aims to offer a nonpartisan forum to promote analysis and discussion.
• Medpac An independent congressional agency advising the U.S. Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program.
• Health Law & Business News - Bloomberg
• Health Law Daily - Westlaw Daily updates on current health law developments including the areas of food safety and Medicaid.

Legal Blogs have become an increasingly rich source of information and legal news.  Below are two indices to health law blogs:

• ABA Journal Health Law Blogs Index
• Justia Healthcare Law Blogs

Non Profits and NGOs

• National Agencies and Organizations from Pace Health Law Research Guide

The following organizations may be particularly useful to researchers:

• Center for Medicare Advocacy Nonprofit, nonpartisan law organization providing education, advocacy, and legal assistance to help people obtain Medicare. In addition to the newsroom, you can sign up for alerts via email.
• Families USA A consumer advocacy group that focuses on Health Care, with a robust newsroom. You can access insights, reports, raw data, and more under their resources tab.

Kaiser Family Foundation

• Kaiser Family Foundation A non-profit organization focusing on national health issues. They provide policy analysis, journalism, and communication for the general public.

Kaiser Health News includes a morning briefing and updates via email or RSS feed:

Community Catalyst

• Community Catalyst Non-profit dedicated to consumer health advocacy, working in 40 states across the country.
• Dual Agenda Newsletter Includes state highlights on health care reform. Their  ACA Implementation Fund  partners with state-based advocacy groups on issues related to the implementation of health care reform. They focus on the state level, and explore the impact of potential repeal.
• Health Policy Hub Blog Allows for email subscription.

The latest posts from their feed are included below:

Health & Medical Field Resources

Health law is an interdisciplinary area. You may benefit from accessing health and biomedical resources.  

For unfamiliar terms and acronyms consult the following:

There are several health and medical databases that may be helpful in your research:

• Harvard Medicine & Public Health Databases
• PubMed For how to use please visit the Pubmed Research Guide
• Web of Science

Additional Resources

Health law also touches on many different research areas.  These additional research guides contain important content related to health law:

• Administrative Law Research by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 595 views this year
• Health Policy by James Adams Last Updated May 25, 2023 151 views this year
• Law and Public Policy by Mindy Kent Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 403 views this year
• Research Guide on International Health Law GlobaLex Guide from Professor Chenglin Liu, St. Mary's University School of Law

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LLM in Medical Law and Ethics

• Academic staff
• Student profiles
• How to apply

The LLM in Medical Law and Ethics addresses a diverse range of topics that reflect the legal and ethical challenges faced by those working in and around health and medicine. These topics are examined in their social, political and historical context.

The programme will cover legal and ethical issues that arise in various contexts, including but not limited to:

• Medical treatment and experimentation
• Regulation of healthcare professionals
• Assisted reproduction
• Assisted dying and euthanasia
• Biomedical research, and
• Public health and global health

My experience on the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics course was fantastic. The quality of the course was impeccable.

Individual and population health is of critical social concern and has been identified as a key ‘global challenge’ which implicates a wide range of actors and policy fields.

This programme is ideal for those who wish to develop skills that will prepare themselves for a career in medical law or ethics or in health-related policy or regulation, and who wish to add new advocacy skills to their professional portfolio. The programme attracts students from a variety of legal backgrounds, as well as students with prior education and training in health and public health-related fields, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.

The LLM in Medical Law and Ethics adopts an interdisciplinary approach to learning, drawing on academics within and beyond law and ethics.

Uniquely, students will have the opportunity to select their own topics for study, exploring together with fellow students and staff, issues that are at the cutting-edge of the broad field of medical law and ethics.

This not only broadens avenues of learning, but also opens students up to a much wider community of scholars and practitioners.

Edinburgh Law School has had a strong presence in the regulation of the medicine, innovation, and related human rights since the birth of the disciplines of medical law and ethics in the 1970s.

Edinburgh Law School is home to the Mason Institute – a world-leading interdisciplinary research hub – whose research feeds directly into the Masters programme.

The Medical Law and Ethics team, alongside the Mason Institute, is also responsible for the leading textbook in the field, Law and Medical Ethics (Oxford University Press). This was the first textbook of its kind in the UK, and it continues the tradition of medical jurisprudence study first laid down by Professors J Kenyon Mason and Alexander McCall Smith.

As a student on the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics programme, you will become part of our active community of scholars, practitioners, and students from around the world.

You will gain insights into both the fundamentals of medical law and ethics, and issues of contemporary significance that reflect the research interests of members of staff. Importantly, you will benefit from interactions with diverse research communities with which the staff are engaged, including:

• The J Kenyon Mason Institute for Medicine Life Sciences and Law, an interdisciplinary research institute based in the Law School
• The Global Academies of Justice and Health
• The Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, based in the School of Social and Political Science
• Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics , and
• The Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society .

The Law School arranges a wide range of events, public lectures and conferences throughout the year which regularly attract high-profile speakers and delegates.

In addition the Mason Institute offers a range of events that you will be able to attend and opportunities to get involved in the activities of the institute. In the video below Dr Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, co-director of the Mason Institute, talks about the range of events and activities that students can attend.

In this video, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first publication of Mason and McCall Smith's Law and Medical Ethics. It is the UK’s leading textbook in medical law and ethics, which was born and nurtured at Edinburgh Law School.

The Mason Institute has its own podcast series and recorded a special episode to celebrate the seminal textbook, Mason and McCall Smith's Law and Medical Ethics.

The podcast looks at how the textbook came about in the first place, what contributions have been made to the current 12th edition published in 2023, and what the future may hold for the book. 

Listen to the Mason Institute Podcasts

If you have any questions about the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics please don’t hesitate to contact us.

[email protected]

This programme can be taken full time over one year, or part time over two years subject to visa restrictions. It offers a range of subjects that covers a broad spectrum of contemporary issues in medical law, jurisprudence and ethics, from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, allowing you to tailor a programme to suit your interests.

The programme consists of 180 credits, comprising taught courses worth 120 credits (60 credits per semester) and a 10,000 word dissertation worth 60 credits. Full programme details for the 2024-25 academic year are available on the University Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study website.

View 2024-25 programme information for the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics

Courses listed below are scheduled for the 2024-25 academic year.

Fundamental Issues in Medical Jurisprudence (20 credits, must be taken in semester 1)

This course serves as a foundation for critical analytical engagement with the core features of the discipline of medical jurisprudence, being the relationship between law and ethics in the provision of healthcare, the influence of human rights on medical practice, the importance of consent, confidentiality and medical negligence in shaping the contours of the doctor/patient relationship, as well as issues at the start and end of life, such as assisted reproduction and assisted dying. Where appropriate, comparative legal analysis will further inform discussion and debate.

Fundamental in Bioethics (20 credits, must be taken in semester 1)

This course serves as a foundation for critical engagement with the core elements of bioethics and of doing bioethics. It will introduce students to three pillars of rigorous bioethical analysis: (i) concepts, (ii) theories, and (iii) robust argumentation. It will equip students with the skills to develop and defend ethical arguments, and to apply these to legal, regulatory and policy issues in health and biomedicine.

Contemporary Issues in Medical Jurisprudence (20 credits, must be taken in semester 2)

This course is designed to engage students with current live issues arising in the field of medical jurisprudence, being a disciplines which sits at the cross-roads between law, medicine and ethics and is concerned primarily with legal and social responses to advanced in medicine, healthcare and related technologies.  The course is deliberately designed to be open and responsive to issues that are current at the time of delivery in any given year.

You must study between 40 and 60 credits from the courses listed below.

Mental Health Law (20 credits)

The main aim of the course is to examine the development of mental health law and how it is applied to related conditions that arise throughout the spectrum of life, beginning with diagnosis of conditions through early years, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and senior years. As well as examining specific legislation, the course (to a lesser extent) will focus on: changing societal attitudes to mental health and the growing recognition that mental health is as important as physical health. The course will also consider the provisions in Scots law and that in England & Wales, for the care and detention of offenders who have a mental health diagnosis. It should be noted that the basis of this course lies in the law and legislation; it does not seek to focus on medical diagnosis or treatment for mental health conditions.

Reproduction and the Law (20 credits)

This course provides students with an understanding of the law, policy, and precedent associated with the regulation of human reproduction in the UK. It provides a solid legal grounding in this area by focusing on four key topics: abortion, assisted reproduction and embryo research, wrongful life and wrongful birth, and surrogacy.

• Shaping and Regulating Modern Healthcare (10 credits) This course provides students with an opportunity to explore some of the ways that modern healthcare has been (and is being) shaped by key events, actors, and objects. In particular, it reflects on how these have impacted on law, policy and regulation in the sector, and how this continues to evolve. This course will contextualise and deepen student's understanding of the changing healthcare landscape. It will equip students to navigate a range of primary and secondary sources in order to advance arguments and positions at this intersection of law, policy and regulation. While this course focuses on the UK as its primary jurisdiction, it also provides scope for students to reflect on the issues raised in relation to their home jurisdictions (if different).

Clinical Negligence and the Law (10 credits)

This course is a detailed exploration of the law of clinical negligence. It is designed to equip students with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of relevant case law. It also aims to develop skills in using the case law effectively by formulating reasoned and persuasive arguments for or against particular legal propositions. Whilst focusing on the law in the UK, the course will have a strong comparative dimension. The clinical negligence action will be viewed in its social, economic and political context and students will be encouraged to reflect critically on the various factors driving law and policy in this area.

You will have the option to take 20 credits from the Law School which will include the courses listed below, depending on availability and with the express permission of the Programme Director.

For full programme and course information please visit the University Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study website.

Having successfully completed 120 credit points of courses within the LLM, you will be ready to move onto a single piece of independent and in-depth research. The 10,000 word dissertation allows you to focus on a preferred topic from within the field of medical law and ethics. Dissertations normally involve the expansion and development of issues addressed in one of your courses. Your Programme Director will be able to advise you as to whether your topic is appropriate for your programme of study.

You will be assigned an academic dissertation supervisor who will provide you with support and guidance while you prepare and write your dissertation.

The dissertation is a challenging but rewarding endeavour, asking you to demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of the relevant literature and an ability to engage critically with a range of sources, drawing on the skills and knowledge you have developed during the course of the programme. Students are encouraged to show originality and evidence of independent thinking, whether in terms of the material used, or the manner in which it is presented.

The dissertation is written in the summer months (April to August) after the taught courses are successfully completed.

Please note that due to unforeseen circumstances or lack of demand for particular courses, we may not be able to run all courses as advertised come the start of the academic year.

Page update: Courses for the 2024-25 year were published on the 3rd May 2024. 

You will be taught by a core teaching team made up of individuals who each has an outstanding record of research in the field, as well as in other related areas. Core teaching staff for the 2024-25 academic year are listed below.

Dr Catriona McMillan - Programme Director 2024-25

Catriona (Katy) McMillan is a Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh School of Law. She is also Deputy Director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law, and Convenor of the Law Society of Scotland's Health and Medical Law Sub-Committee.

Find out more

Professor Anne-Maree Farrell is Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at Edinburgh Law School and Director of the Mason Institute.

Professor Farrell's research expertise lies generally in health law and bioethics. She is particularly interested in the relationship between politics and regulation in the area of health. She has specific interests in law and the human body (blood, organ, tissue), health technologies, health security, the management of public health risks, clinical negligence and no-fault compensation for medical injury. She admitted to legal practice as a solicitor in Australia, Ireland, England & Wales. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked as a lawyer in private legal practice specialising in mass torts, product liability and medical negligence.

Murray Earle is a Teaching Fellow in medical law. He is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand (BA Law & International Relations; BA (Hons) Comparative Literature), and the University of Edinburgh (LLM Medical Jurisprudence & the Sociology of Law; and PhD in Medical Law).

Murray started his career as a lecturer in medical law at the University of Glasgow, while completing his PhD. That was followed by work as a Senior Researcher at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe, 2000-2011). From there he developed an independent career, writing, and teaching on, a wide range of online postgraduate medical law courses offered by the School of Law, at the University of Edinburgh. He was also involved in writing for a range of reference publications.

Dr Annie Sorbie is a Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School, with a research and teaching portfolio. She is a medical lawyer (currently non-practising) with over 14 years’ experience in legal practice in the health, social care and regulatory sector (September 2001 – December 2015, Partner from 2009). She has extensive experience of providing strategic advice on matters of health regulatory practice and policy, both in health and social care regulation, and also more widely within the NHS and private sectors.

Having joined the Wellcome funded Liminal Spaces Project in January 2016, Annie’s doctoral research interrogates the contribution of the public interest to health research regulation in the context of access to identifiable patient information for research purposes without consent. Annie is also a Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law, and co-leads its policy portfolio. In June 2018 Annie was appointed to the Lay Advisory Group of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Find out more about Annie Sorbie

Emily is an Early Career Fellow in Bioethics. Her background is in philosophical bioethics and policy management. She was awarded her PhD for her thesis ‘Defining Ourselves: narrative identity and access to personal bioinformation’ in 2017.

Prior to her doctoral research she worked in policy roles at the Scottish Government in the fields of public health and environmental justice. She was also project leader and co-author of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2013 report ‘Novel Neurotechnologies: intervening in the brain’. She has published on ethical and legal issues relating to identity development, consent to research participation, secondary uses of health data, and neurotechnology.

Emily’s main research interests lie in exploring the relationships between biomedical information and self-conception, specifically the narrative constitution of self. Emily is Course Organiser for the on-campus and online LLM courses Fundamentals in Bioethics and Biotechnology, Bioethics and Society. She is a Deputy Director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law, with particular responsibility for the Institute’s policy engagement portfolio.

Find out more about Emily Postan

Dr. Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra is Chancellor’s Fellow in the Legal and Ethical Aspects of Biomedicine, and Co-director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law. She is also a member of the Wellcome Trust-funded Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society.

Dr. Ganguli-Mitra’s background is in bioethics, with a special interest in global bioethics, structural and gender justice. She has written on ethical issues related to global surrogacy, sex-selection, biomedical research in low-income countries, social value in research governance and the concepts of exploitation and vulnerability in bioethics.

Find out more about Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra

Gerard is a lecturer in medical law and ethics in the School of Law. His research interests include medical law, patent law and the regulation of the life sciences. He speaks Japanese and also conducts comparative research in Japanese law within these subject areas.

He has held visiting fellowships at the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights (Mumbai, India), the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore and with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Find out more about Gerard Porter

You may also be taught by other leading experts and practitioners.

The staff teaching on this programme are subject to change for 2024-25. Staff listed as on sabbatical will not be available to teach for the duration of their sabbatical.

[email protected]  

Find out what it's like to study for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School from our current and former students.

Fabienne, UK

Fabienne is a 2023 graduate of the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School. In this video, she talks about her experience studying the LLM and what it's like to live in the city of Edinburgh.

Titlee is a 2023 graduate of the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School. In this video, she talks about her experience studying the LLM and what it's like to live in the city of Edinburgh.

Eleonora, from Italy, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2021/22 academic year, graduating in 2022. In this video she talks about her experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh and her plans for the future.

Chioma, from Nigeria, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2021/22 academic year, graduating in 2022. In this video she talks about her experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh and her plans for the future.

Qinlin, from China, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2021/22 academic year, graduating in 2022. In this video he talks about his experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh and his plans for the future.

Leyla, from the UK, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2021/22 academic year, graduating in 2022. In this video she talks about her experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh and her plans for the future.

Xuanyun studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the academic year 2021-22, graduating in 2022.

"After undergraduate education in medical law from China, I wanted to gain a more in-depth understanding of the field. Therefore, I decided to do my Master's in Medical Law and Ethics in Edinburgh.

The programme has given me a fresh experience, as I have not only learned about the law but also about bioethics, which I had little knowledge of before. I was also able to fulfill my academic and practical interests by taking different courses. The professors are very enthusiastic. Their love for the topic is evident through their words in class, and they are very patient in answering every question.

Before coming to Edinburgh, all I remembered about the city and Scotland was the old buildings and kilts. When I came to Edinburgh, I felt the city's beauty and the Scots' friendliness. The sunsets on Calton Hill and the jazz in the pubs will always be in my memory."

Rhiannon, from England, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2019/20 academic year, graduating in 2020. In this video she talks about her experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh, completing her studies during the Covid-19 pandemic and her plans for the future.

My name is Chris Maragh; I am a healthcare professional from Ontario, Canada. I have over seven years of experience in the field.

I attended the University of Edinburgh and pursued an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics because I have a broad interest in learning how the law can improve health systems.

Based on this interest, the programme exceeded my expectations. I learned how law, policy, governance, and ethics could improve the health of the population and the delivery of health programmes and services. I also learned many skills and tools that are applicable to any health system. Particularly, ethical and legal theories that can evaluate the efficacy of strategies, policies, and laws pertaining to health and social care. This is all attributed to the teaching staff that I would describe as experts in the field who are dedicated to helping students grow personally and professionally. I would highly recommend this programme to anyone who desires to navigate and solve complex problems related to medical law and ethics.

Last but not least, Edinburgh is a safe and beautiful place to live and study. It is hard to give a brief description of the city; however, I will say that there something for everyone in the city – culture, nature, history, and nightlife. My most memorable moments were exploring Scotland and developing friendships with people from across the globe.

Chris studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the academic year 2019-20, graduating in 2020.

Emma, from the USA, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2019/20 academic year, graduating in 2020. In this video she talks about his experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh, completing her studies during the Covid-19 pandemic and her plans for the future.

I applied for a place on the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at The University of Edinburgh after working as a Dentist in the NHS for around seven years.

I was initially drawn to the programme to learn more about the legal and ethical issues surrounding medical treatments and public health interventions in the UK. My aim was then to apply this knowledge to my day-to-day clinical work.

The teaching on this LLM is excellent. The Programme Director and academic staff are very approachable and supportive. I met many other students from all over the world with a wide range of Undergraduate degrees. We shared and discussed many topics during our seminars and beyond. Edinburgh is also a beautiful city to live in and explore!

This LLM in Medical Law and Ethics opened many doors for me and equipped me with the skills I needed to work towards further clinical and academic goals.

Mattie studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the academic year 2019-20, graduating in 2020.

Kathryn, from Scotland, studied for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2019/20 academic year, graduating in 2020. In this video she talks about her experience of studying for an LLM at Edinburgh Law School, life in Edinburgh, completing her studies during the Covid-19 pandemic and her plans for the future.

Destiny studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the 2018-19 academic year. In this video she talks about her experience of studying the LLM at Edinburgh Law School.

Claudia talks about her experience of studying for an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School and life in Edinburgh.

Peter, a Geriatrician from Singapore and originally from Hong Kong, talks about his experience of studying the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School.

Isabelle graduated with an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in 2018. Here she talks about her experience of studying on the LLM at Edinburgh Law School in the 2017-18 academic year.

Nasser studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the academic year 2017-18, graduating in 2018.

When I decided to pursue an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics, Edinburgh was my first choice. Well, actually it was my only choice as I decided to apply to this single place and wait for the response. I like the beautiful city of Edinburgh as well as its friendly people.

Studying the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics with a medical background was a challenging task for me. I had no formal background in law, and this was a concern for me. However, I received assurance on the first day of the programme, when I met Prof. Graeme Laurie, that I will be able to move smoothly, and, this what happened.

I enjoyed the programme and curriculum very much. I started to build on my background, change some conceptions, and even challenge others which I took earlier as a given. The programme was quite interactive throughout the year, with various tasks and tools adding further interest to the programme. I enjoyed interacting with both our instructors and fellow students equally.

The Programme Director, dissertation supervisor and courses lecturers were very helpful and approachable throughout my studies. They handled all concerns positively and professionally. They were supportive and encouraged positive interactions. The programme director was very helpful to address concerns and smoothen the work during the study year. The dissertation supervisor was very approachable and provided excellent guidance throughout the work of the dissertation.

Moreover, I found my extra-curricular learning was as equally fascinating and fruitful. For example, the Mason Institute seminars were particularly useful and provided a boost for the topics we encountered in the programme. This is in addition to many other useful courses that are provided by the University of Edinburgh for its students for free throughout the year.

If there is one thing I regret, it is not doing this programme earlier. Throughout this year, I felt like a member of the Medical Law and Ethics family. I enjoyed the learning opportunity as well as the company of the people on the programme. I think this LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh is one of the best and it opens the door for future endeavours. As I return to my medical career in Oman, I see clearly how this programme has equipped me with new skills and ways of thinking that further enhance my professional work.

Gabriel studied the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in the academic year 2017-18, graduating in 2018.

"As a lawyer, I have been working on health issues in Chile for almost a decade, mainly in public institutions such as the Ministry of Health and the Superintendence of Health. This allowed me to understand the problems and challenges in the area of health, requiring a critical and multidisciplinary approach to face and resolve them.

I decided to study a Masters degree related to topics that could be applied to future challenges related to legal and ethical issues in the health area, which have a massive impact on the lives of all people and communities.

Through the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, I was set on finding a multidisciplinary and critical approach to these subjects. In addition, I was interested in the more complex aspects of regulations on medicine and health, and the associated ethical problems beyond the purely legal approach.

Why this LLM at the University of Edinburgh? The LLM in Medical Law and Ethics covers all the relevant topics associated with this discipline, including contemporary problems, issues related to risks and regulation, the constant emergence of biotechnology, and the complex balance between governance and innovation in medicine. The University of Edinburgh is one of the best universities in the world according to international rankings and its programme has proven to be rigorous, continual and innovative. Plus, Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and its people are wonderful.

My expectations for this post graduate degree programme were widely exceeded. The LLM perfectly combines the current aspects and challenges in the area of medical law with a broad view of its regulations and problems, and it incorporates complex argumentative tools and resources of ethical analysis. The professors play a fundamental role in providing a high level vision of the discipline and in students having a high level of participation in the intellectual exchange. As a result, the global and enriched vision allows programme participants to explore different problems in a sophisticated manner and in more depth than a mere aggregate of knowledge. This has been a great contribution in my current work regarding solving the health problems of the population and in an eventual reform of my country’s health system."

Please note that the information provided is for entry in the 2024-25 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. 

This programme can be taken full time over one year, or part time over two years subject to visa restrictions.

Due to high demand, the school operates a number of selection deadlines. We will make a small number of offers to the most outstanding candidates on an ongoing basis, but hold the majority of applications until the next published selection deadline when we will offer a proportion of the places available to applicants selected through a competitive process.

We recommend that you apply as early as possible. This is particularly important for applicants who may need to allow sufficient time to take an English language test, for overseas students who may need time to satisfy necessary visa requirements and/or to apply for University accommodation.

We require a minimum 2:1 honours degree from a UK university, or its international equivalent, in law, politics, medicine, medical humanities, or life sciences. Entry to this programme is competitive. Meeting minimum requirements for consideration does not guarantee an offer of study.

Supporting your application

• Relevant work experience is not required but may increase your chances of acceptance.
• Relevant professional qualifications will be considered.
• Preference will be given to those with grades above the minimum requirements due to strong competition for places on this programme.

International qualifications

You can check whether your degree qualification is equivalent to the minimum standard before applying.

Check your degree

Students from China

This degree is Band A.

Find out more about our postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

Postgraduate study in the field of law requires a thorough, complex and demanding knowledge of English, so we ask that the communication skills of all students are at the same minimum standard.

You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic and IELTS Academic Online : total 7.0 (at least 7.0 in the writing component and 6.5 in each other module)
• TOEFL-iBT (including Special Home Edition): total 100 (at least 25 in writing and 23 in each other module)
• C1 Advanced (CAE) / C2 Proficiency (CPE): total 185 (at least 185 in writing and 176 in in all other components)
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with passes in all four components
• PTE Academic: 70 overall with at least 70 in the writing component and 62 in each other component
• Oxford ELLT (Global and Digital): 9 overall with at least 9 in the writing component and 8 in each other component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE, in which case it must be no more than two years old on the first of the month in which the degree begins.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree, that was taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country as defined by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI). The UK Government's website provides a list of majority English speaking countries.

View the UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree, or equivalent, that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries.

Approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

View approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries

Your application may not be successful if you do not currently satisfy any of these requirements; alternatively, you may be offered a place conditional on your reaching the satisfactory standard by the time you start the degree.

Find out more about the University's English language requirements

Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes

We also accept satisfactory completion of our English for Academic Purposes programme as meeting our English language requirements. You must complete the programme no more than two years and one month before the start date of the degree you are applying to study.

Find out more about the University's Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes

English language support

The University runs a series of programmes for English Language Education, including a pre-sessional English Language Programme intended to strengthen your English Language skills before you start your programme of study.

Find out more about English language support offered by the University

Deadlines for applicants applying to study the LLM in Medical Law and Ethics in 2024-25 are provided in the table below.

We monitor application numbers carefully to ensure we are able to accommodate all those who receive offers. It may therefore be necessary to close a programme earlier than the published deadline and if this is the case we will place a four-week warning notice on the relevant programme page.

Please note that the deadline for meeting the conditions of an offer is 18 August 2024.

Applications are made online via the University Application Service, EUCLID.

Please follow the instructions carefully and make sure that you have included the following documentation with your application:

• You will need to submit a personal statement of around 500 words, outlining your academic history and relevant experience. Guidance on writing your personal statement .
• Degree certificates showing award of degree
• Previous academic transcripts for all past degree programmes (please upload the full transcript showing results from all years of study)
• A reference in support of your application. The reference should be academic and dated no earlier than one year from the start of study on the LLM programme
• Evidence of English language proficiency, if required

If you are currently studying for your degree or you are not in a possession of an English test result you may still apply to the programme. Please note that it is your responsibility to submit the necessary documents.

Please be aware that applications must be submitted and complete, i.e. all required documents uploaded, by the relevant application deadline in order to be considered in that round. Your application will still be considered if you have not yet met the English language requirement for the programme.

View full detailed application guidance

Students at this University must not undertake any other concurrent credit bearing studies in this (or in any other) institution, unless the College has granted permission. The College must be satisfied that any additional credit-bearing studies will not restrict the student’s ability to complete their existing programme of study. Students will not be permitted to undertake concurrent degree programmes in any circumstances.

If you are studying at this or another institution just prior to the start of your postgraduate studies you must have finished these studies before the start of the programme to which you have an offer.

After your application has been submitted you will be able to track its progress through the University's applicant hub.

Application processing times will vary, however the admissions team will endeavour to process your application within four to six weeks of submission. Please note that missing documentation will delay the application process.

You will be informed as soon as possible of the decision taken. Three outcomes are possible:

• You may be offered a place unconditionally
• You may be offered a conditional place, which means that you must fulfil certain conditions that will be specified in the offer letter. Where a conditional offer is made, it is your responsibility to inform the College Postgraduate Office when you have fulfilled the requirements set out.  Please note that the deadline for meeting the conditions of an offer is 18 August 2024.
• Your application may be unsuccessful. If your application has not been successful, you can request feedback from us or refer to our guidance for unsuccessful applicants, which explains some of the common reasons we why we reach this decision. View the University's guidance for unsuccessful applicants

Deferring your offer

We do not normally offer deferrals, however, we may be able to make a very limited number of offers for deferred entry in exceptional circumstances.

View full guidance on deferral requests

The University’s terms and conditions form part of your contract with the University, and you should read them, and our data protection policy, carefully before applying.

University of Edinburgh admissions terms and conditions

Key information

Llm and msc programmes.

LLM in Medical Law and Ethics by online learning

Why Edinburgh Law School?

The Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law

LLM Health, Law and Society

At a critical time in history, our LLM in Health, Law and Society presents an exciting opportunity for you to develop a deep understanding of the relationships between law, governance and health across society and governmental sectors. There is a growing demand for lawyers with the knowledge and skills to approach some of the greatest challenges for law and policy as mechanisms to address health and wellbeing.

The LLM in Health, Law, and Society has been well received as a distinctive course that goes far beyond traditional courses in healthcare law. It offers an in-depth, intensive study of wide-ranging issues from health inequalities and regulation of the body to reproductive justice and mental health and wellbeing. It also explores the diverse roles social and political institutions and emerging technologies, such as healthtech, can play.

Choosing this LLM means you will be challenged and inspired by world-leading academics dedicated to progressive and innovative thinking in health law and governance - with those teaching the course belonging to the Law School's Centre for Health, Law, and Society. The intellectually demanding, research-rich curriculum will allow you to demonstrate excellent legal, analytical and research skills and be empowered to pursue top-flight careers in a variety of fields.

This course has particular appeal for those looking to work in areas such as healthcare regulation, with NGOs and other agencies, or in legal/policy research. Find out how you can do more with law at the University of Bristol Law School.

On demand academic talks

Hear directly from an academic giving you a deeper insight into this programme.

Programme structure

We have a large and vibrant international community and University of Bristol LLM students benefit from small class sizes taught by world-leading experts. The LLM in Health, Law and Society provides an exciting range of units that reflect the expertise of our globally-renowned academics and an opportunity to further specialise your degree.

You will take four units (120 credit points overall, 30 credit points each) and a compulsory dissertation (60 credit points). You will take units in Health Inequalities, Law and Society and Law, Governance, and Health, and at least one optional unit linked to the Health, Law and Society programme. You may also take a further Health Law unit or one chosen from the LLM programmes more widely (not all units from the wider LLM programme are available to non-Law graduates).

Visit our programme catalogue for full details of the structure and unit content for our LLM in Health, Law and Society.

World-leading research

The University of Bristol is ranked fifth for research in the UK ( Times Higher Education ).

94% of our research assessed as world-leading or internationally excellent.

Entry requirements

An upper second-class honours degree or international equivalent in Law or a related discipline (such as History, Philosophy, Politics or Policy Studies). Degrees in Health Care or Health Sciences (such as Medicine and Nursing) and related streams will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

For applicants who are currently completing a degree, we understand that their final grade may be higher than the interim grades or module/unit grades they achieve during their studies.

We will consider applicants whose interim grades are currently slightly lower than the programme's entry requirements. We may make these applicants an aspirational offer. This offer would be at the standard level, so the applicant would need to achieve the standard entry requirements by the end of their degree.

We will consider applicants whose grades are slightly lower than the programme's entry requirements, if they have at least one of the following:

• evidence of significant, relevant work experience;
• a relevant postgraduate qualification.

If this is the case, applicants should include their CV (curriculum vitae / résumé) when they apply, showing details of their relevant work experience and/or qualifications.

See international equivalent qualifications on the International Office website.

Read the programme admissions statement for important information on entry requirements, the application process and supporting documents required.

If English is not your first language, you will need to reach the requirements outlined in our  profile level B.

Further information about  English language requirements and profile levels .

Fees and funding

Fees are subject to an annual review. For programmes that last longer than one year, please budget for up to an 8% increase in fees each year.

More about tuition fees, living costs and financial support .

Alumni discount

University of Bristol students and graduates can benefit from a 25% reduction in tuition fees for postgraduate study.  Check your eligibility for an alumni discount.

Funding for 2024/25

Information about funding and scholarships can be found on the University of Bristol Law School fees and funding webpages . This includes information about the Law School's Think Big about Global Justice Scholarships , open to international postgraduate students.

Further information on funding for prospective UK and international postgraduate students.

Career prospects

Graduating from Bristol will open doors for careers in a variety of sectors. Suitable for graduates in law, medical and related streams, this LLM will help:

• develop and deepen understanding of health, law, and society,
• build transferable skills,
• provide a springboard into a diverse range of careers,
• boost the prospects for those already working in related fields,
• provide a solid first step towards a research career.

Please visit our careers and employability webpage for more information about the additional opportunities we provide.

How to apply

Apply via our online application system. For further information, please see the guidance for how to apply on our webpages.

Overseas applicants: 24 July 2024. Home applicants: 9 August 2024.

Please note that due to high demand, some programmes may close earlier than advertised. Early applications are advised to avoid disappointment. Places are limited and allocated on a continuous basis from September 2023 until all places are filled.

Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

University of Bristol Law School

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Medical law dissertation topics and Research Ideas

Introduction Studying medical law is like taking a journey through important rules that affect people’s health. Your dissertation is like a map guiding you on this journey. Choosing the right topic is key – it’s like picking the best path to explore. You can look into patient rights, mistakes in healthcare, or moral issues in […]

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Introduction

Studying medical law is like taking a journey through important rules that affect people’s health. Your dissertation is like a map guiding you on this journey. Choosing the right topic is key – it’s like picking the best path to explore. You can look into patient rights, mistakes in healthcare, or moral issues in medicine. Make your research titles interesting and clear, like “Keeping Patients in Control: What the Law Says” or “Finding the Balance: Doctors’ Responsibilities.” Your dissertation isn’t just a paper; it shows your dedication to making healthcare fairer and safer for everyone.

If you’re writing a medical law dissertation, there are a few things you might want to consider. First, you’ll need to choose a specific topic within the broader field of medical law. Some possible medical law dissertation topics could include:

• Patient Rights and Legal Protection : Explore the legal frameworks protecting patients’ rights in healthcare, covering informed consent, privacy, and access to medical records. Suggested reading : “Law and the Regulation of Medicines” by Emily Jackson.
• Medical Negligence Lawsuits: Trends and Implications : Investigate recent trends in medical negligence lawsuits, analyzing their impact on healthcare providers and patients. Suggested reading : “Clinical Negligence” by Michael Powers QC.
• Ethical Dilemmas in End-of-Life Care : Examine legal and ethical challenges surrounding end-of-life decisions, including euthanasia, assisted suicide, and advance directives. Suggested reading : “End of Life Care: Ethics and Law” by Margaret Brazier.
• Healthcare Disparities and Legal Remedies : Study the legal mechanisms available to address healthcare disparities, focusing on issues like access to care, socioeconomic factors, and discrimination. Suggested reading : “Health Law and Medical Ethics” by Bonnie Steinbock.
• Telemedicine Regulation and Practice : Investigate the legal landscape governing telemedicine, exploring regulatory challenges, licensing requirements, and patient safety considerations. Suggested reading : “Telemedicine and E-Health Law” by Thomas T. Field Jr.
• Legal Implications of Emerging Medical Technologies : Explore the legal and regulatory frameworks surrounding emerging medical technologies such as gene editing, artificial intelligence, and wearable devices. Suggested reading : “Healthcare and the Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Y. Yogi Shankar.
• Confidentiality and Data Protection in Healthcare : Analyze the legal obligations and challenges related to patient confidentiality, data protection, and cybersecurity in healthcare settings. Suggested reading : “Medical Law and Ethics” by Jonathan Herring.
• Mental Health Law Reform : Investigate the legal aspects of mental health treatment and care, focusing on involuntary commitments, capacity assessments, and patient rights. Suggested reading : “Mental Health Law: A Practical Guide” by Jill Stavert.
• Pharmaceutical Regulation and Access to Medicines : Examine the legal frameworks governing pharmaceutical regulation, including drug approvals, patents, and access to essential medicines. Suggested reading : “Pharmaceutical Regulation and Innovation” by Frederick M. Abbott.
• Medical Malpractice and Tort Law : Analyze the principles of medical malpractice law, including duty of care, standard of care, causation, and damages, and explore recent developments in tort reform. Suggested reading : “Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History” by G. Edward White.

Once you’ve chosen a topic in medical law, you’ll need to do some research to gather information for your dissertation. This may involve reading scholarly articles, analyzing case law, and conducting interviews with experts in the field. As you write your dissertation, you’ll need to make a strong argument and support it with evidence from your research. You’ll also need to be sure to cite your sources properly, using a citation style that is appropriate for your discipline.

I hope this information is helpful as you begin working on your medical law dissertation! Below are more interesting dissertation topics on medical law.

Good Medical Law Dissertation Topics

Here are some potential topics for a medical law dissertation:

• The legal and ethical implications of assisted suicide
• The legal and ethical considerations of informed consent in medical treatment
• The legal and ethical aspects of rationing healthcare resources
• Legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of placebo treatments
• The legal and ethical considerations of medical error and negligence
• The role of informed consent in clinical trials
• The legal and ethical implications of using genetic information in medical treatment
• The legal and ethical considerations of end-of-life decision-making
• The legal and ethical implications of mandatory vaccination policies
• The legal and ethical considerations of medical tourism.

Hot Medical Law Dissertation Topics

• The role of informed consent in medical treatment
• The ethical considerations of genetic testing and its role in medical treatment
• The legal and ethical implications of medical tourism
• The rights of patients with mental illness in the medical system
• The role of advance directives in end-of-life decision-making
• The legal and ethical implications of rationing healthcare resources
• The intersection of medical law and indigenous healing practices
• The ethical and legal considerations of organ transplantation
• The legal and ethical aspects of telemedicine
• The impact of medical errors on patient rights and the legal system.

Trending Medical Law Dissertation Topics

Here are some trending medical law dissertation topics that you might consider:

• The impact of telemedicine on medical negligence liability
• The ethical and legal considerations of assisted reproductive technologies
• Medical confidentiality in the age of electronic health records
• The intersection of medical law and mental health law
• The role of informed consent in medical treatment decisions
• Advance care planning and end-of-life decision-making
• The liability of pharmaceutical companies for defective drugs
• The legal and ethical implications of using predictive analytics in healthcare
• The right to access experimental treatments: a legal and ethical analysis
• The regulation of stem cell research and therapy.
• The legal and ethical considerations surrounding the use of telemedicine
• The legal and ethical implications of end-of-life decisions
• The impact of medical malpractice laws on patient safety
• The legal and ethical considerations of genetic testing and research
• The use of medical cannabis and its legal and ethical implications
• The legal and ethical considerations of reproductive technologies such as assisted reproductive technologies and surrogacy
• The role of Advance Directives (such as living wills) in healthcare decision-making
• The legal and ethical considerations of rationing scarce medical resources, such as during a pandemic
• The legal and ethical implications of medical tourism.

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• 69 Best Law Dissertation Topics and Research Ideas

Regardless of the specific topic you choose, it is important to conduct a thorough review of the relevant literature, carefully analyze and synthesize the information you gather, and present your findings in a clear and well-organized manner. It is also important to adhere to any guidelines or requirements set forth by your institution or supervisor.

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Healthcare Dissertation Topics

Published by Carmen Troy at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On May 16, 2024

Healthcare education brings together the science and arts of medicine along with the practice of general education. Healthcare is an educational program that is tremendously significant for humans and society.

Medicine, nursing, and all other related healthcare fields provide a substantial understanding of living beings, disease trends, treatment, treatment outcomes, functional abilities, disabilities, and much more.

The primary purpose of healthcare is to ensure people’s health, look after the patients, and provide information about health risks and their effects. Healthcare education provides knowledge and information about life and helps survival, to say the least.

We all rely on the healthcare system to get physically well and resume the mundane course of life after getting affected by a health risk.

Therefore, studying healthcare is of immense importance as it offers you the opportunity to serve humanity by looking after their health. If you are studying healthcare science, you will need to complete a dissertation to complete a degree and practice its laws and principles.

It is always a highly complex task to begin the dissertation or even find the motivation. Choosing the right topic can help you cross their mental barrier, however. Look at some of the potential healthcare dissertation topics mentioned below to get an idea for starting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting a  brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the problem,  research question , aim and objectives,  literature review , along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted. Let us know if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  example dissertation  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

You can review step by step guide on how to write your dissertation  here .

List Of Latest & Free Healthcare Dissertation Topics

• What are the ethics of using artificial intelligence in personalised medicine?
• The use of virtual reality for pain management in chronic illness. 
• The impact of mindfulness-based interventions on healthcare worker burnout. 
• How is climate change affecting the spread of infectious diseases globally?
• 3D printing technology for prosthetics
• Promoting mental health literacy with a mediating role of diversity. 
• The potential of gene therapy in treating genetic disorders. 
• Effects of 5G technology on remote medical care consultation 
• The use of deep learning has gotten a lot of attention in the development of detection software. How can it be used to detect diabetes?
• Use of deep learning to detect breast cancer among women
• The impact of remote work on the mental health of employees. 
• Strategies to address burnout in medical students. 
• The impact of air pollution on the lungs and respiratory conditions of people.

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Healthcare Dissertation Topics For Your Research

Topic 1: investigating the impact of household air pollution (hap) on the respiratory health of people and recommend measures of intervention.

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the impact of household air pollution (HAP) on the respiratory health of people and recommend measures of intervention

Objectives:

• To analyse the contributors of HAP.
• To determine the impact of harmful particulate matter on the respiratory health of people.
• To suggest measure for controlling HAP through intervention with biomass fuels.

Topic 2: An assessment of the bioethics issues arising during medicine development and administration to patients and how ethics of public health can be improved

Research Aim: The research aims to conduct an assessment of the bioethics issues arising during medicine development and administration to patients and how ethics of public health can be improved

• To analyse the bioethics challenges associated with medicine development and patent administration.
• To examine the measures of improvement of ethics associated with public health.
• To conduct an assessment of the bioethics issues arising during medicine development and administration to patients and how ethics of public health can be improved

Topic 3: Investigating the present global health security infrastructure and its capacity to detect and prevent the spread of infectious diseases. A case study of the outbreak of COVID-19.

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the present global health security infrastructure and its capacity to detect and prevent the spread of infectious diseases. A case study of the outbreak of COVID -19.

• To analyse the concept of global health security.
• To determine the current infrastructure of global health security and the position of WHO in detecting and preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
• To investigate the effectiveness of the present global health security infrastructure in dealing with the Coviud-19 pandemic and recommendations for future scenarios.

Topic 4: Investigating the importance of vaccines and childhood nutrition in improving maternal and child health

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the importance of vaccines and childhood nutrition in improving maternal and child health

• To determine the present challenges of maternal and child health and its significance in society.
• To analyse the role of vaccines and childhood nutrition in safeguarding the health of the mother and child.
• To recommend measures to improve maternal and child health for ensuring wellbeing of the families with pre-natal and well-child care for infant and maternal mortality prevention.

Topic 5: An analysis of the risks of tobacco and second-hand smoke exposure on the cardiovascular health of people in the UK.

Research Aim: The research aims to conduct an analysis of the risks of tobacco and second-hand smoke exposure on the cardiovascular health of people in the UK.

• To contextualise the risk factors of tobacco and second-hand smoke.
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Trending Healthcare Dissertation Topics

Topic. 1: covid-19 and health care system.

Research aim: The prime focus of the research will be analysing the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare system and how the healthcare system was able to handle the health emergency in different regions of the world. The research can pinpoint one location and study its healthcare system from the perspective of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Topic 2: UN health care policy and its implications

Research aim: The UN has a major health department that oversees the health sector around the world. The United Nations plays an important role in bringing sustainability in human life physically, economically, and in so many other ways. The main goal of the research will be to understand and analyse the UN healthcare policy and identify to what extent it is improving healthcare systems around the world.

Topic 3: WHO's response to COVID-19

Research aim: It is an undisputed argument that the World Health organisation was at the forefront when the tsunami of pandemics hit the world. From keeping people informed to ensuring the formulation of vaccines, the WHO’s role was comprehensive. The aim of the research is to identify how WHO responded to the outbreak and helped people stay protected. The research will critically analyse the plans that were formulated and executed in response to the COVID -19.

Topic no.4: The spread of the variant during the Olympics and Paralympics

Research Aim:  Olympics were called from July to August in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, when delta variant had been engulfing lives around the world. While many people opposed the decision of arranging the Olympics, it ended up with flying colours. But it is said that due to the Olympics and Paralympics, in which athletes from all over the world participated, the delta variant transcended easily.

The aim of the research is to find out whether or not the Olympics and Paralympics helped the spread of the delta variant. 

Topic no. 5: The COVID-19 Vaccination drive and people's response

Research Aim: There is a large proportion of people who are still unvaccinated against COVID -19 in the world. The aim of the research is to track the COVID -19 vaccination drive around the world. The researcher will also find the key motivations behind their denial.

Topic no. 6: Poverty and its impact on childhood diseases

Research aim: The aim of the research will be to find out the relationship between poverty and childhood diseases. The researcher can conduct quantitative research by finding out the figures of most affected childhood diseases and their financial data in the world.

Topic no. 7: The motivation towards a healthy life

Research Aim: By and large, it is said that people in a few regions of the world are more motivated towards attaining a healthy life than in other places. The purpose of the research is to find relative and varying motivations to live healthily around the world.

Topic 8: Health crisis in warzone countries

Research aim: Children and women are the most suffered creatures in the warzone areas of the world. The purpose of the research is to identify the health crisis of women and children in places where there is no rule of law.

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Also Read: Medicine and Nursing Dissertation Topics

Topic 9: Scope of Health care research

Research aim: The research aims to identify and analyse the significance of healthcare research and its effects on humans and society. The researcher will identify the necessity of the study in the field and its overall impact. 

Topic 10: The future of telemedicine

Research aim: Telemedicine refers to the use of technology to disseminate medical information, diagnose, or interact with a patient. Currently, it is gaining tremendous importance, especially due to the pandemic, but it is important to figure out how it will work out in the future.

The research aim of the research would be to find the significance of telemedicine and its prospects.

Topic 11: Controlling infectious diseases

Research aim: The research will aim to find out whether or not infectious diseases are difficult to deal with. The paper will identify all the elements responsible for making infectious diseases unstoppable. The researcher can make arguments in the context of the COVID-19.

Topic 12: Effective health care policies around the world

Research aim: Different countries have different healthcare systems with different policies around the world. The aim of the research will be to find out the most effective healthcare systems around the world. The research can incorporate both quantitive and qualitative methods for the study.

The researcher can pinpoint a respective area for the study—for example, the healthcare system of Nigeria, the United States, South Asia etc.

Topic 13: Technology and health care system

Research aim: The advancements in technology have transformed all aspects of our life, and the healthcare system is no exception.

The main aim of the research will be to find out the impact of technology on the healthcare system.

Topic 14: Health care system in 2030

Research aim: The aim of the research will be to identify trends and forecast the future. The researcher will examine the healthcare system today and study the elements that may bring about change and may modify it in the future. The projections must be based on evidence.

Topic 15: The emotional impacts of COVID-19

Research aim: The COVID-19 affected normal life significantly. People were locked in their homes, and the roads and streets were empty. From that perspective, it is significant to understand how(if it did) affected people emotionally.

The main aim of the research will be to find out how and to what extent COVID-19 it affected people emotionally. 

Topic 16: Beauty standards and how they impact the health of humans

Research aim: Neither being skinny is healthy, nor starvation is the solution to getting a perfect body shape. The standard beauty standards have persistently put social pressure on individuals to become as per se. Otherwise, they will be neglected or segregated. The research will aim to find out how people who try to meet the standard beauty standards affect their health. 

Topic 17: Depression and anxiety in adults in developed countries

Research aim: Depression and anxiety are some common instances that occur to almost all people. It may apparently look like people in developed countries, having access to their basic needs, must not have anything to worry about. It might not be what looks from the outside. The research will measure the rate of increase or decrease in depression and anxiety in adults in developed countries and identify the key determining factors.

Topic 18: Creating awareness of Breast cancer in third world countries

Research aim: The aim of the research will be to identify why it is important to create awareness about breast cancer in third-world countries and identify how to do so.

Topic 19: Gene therapy for hemoglobinopathies

Research aim: Haemoglobinopathies are genetic problems that affect the structure or formation of haemoglobin. One recent research identifies gene therapy as a solution to the disorders. The research will aim to identify how effective gene therapy is and in what capacity it can be used in medicine in the future.

Topic 20: The unspoken problems of health care management

Research aim: While so much stress is put on ensuring the treatment of patients and advancing the healthy lives of humans in general, there is very little say about what problems may be faced by people who are managing . The research aims to identify the undiscussed problems faced by healthcare management to ensure a healthy life for people.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How to find healthcare dissertation topics.

To find healthcare dissertation topics:

• Examine emerging health issues.
• Analyse gaps in healthcare.
• Review medical literature.
• Consider policy or technology impacts.
• Explore patient perspectives.
• Select a topic that aligns with your passion and career aspirations.

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Medical Ethics and Law

Medical Ethics and Law - MA

This programme provides an opportunity to undertake in-depth study of healthcare ethics and law, and to develop the ability to think systematically and critically about the moral and legal issues that healthcare professionals and those involved in healthcare management and policy may encounter in the course of their work. Ideal for working professionals or recent graduates, the programme comprises four taught modules plus a dissertation on a topic chosen by the student. Teaching takes place in short, intensive blocks to facilitate combining study with full-time work, and the course may be studied flexibly over one, two or five years.

Month of entry

Mode of study.

• Full time, Part time
• Keele University campus

Subject area

• Ethics, Law

Fees for 2024/25 academic year

UK - Full time: £9,800 per year UK - Part time: Year 1: £6,900, Year 2: £3,000 International - Full time: £19,500 per year

Duration of study

• Full time - 1 year, Part time - 2 years, Modular - Up to 5 years

Why study Medical Ethics and Law at Keele University?

Course overview, course summary.

New developments in treatments and technology, coupled with shifting social attitudes, mean that the legal and ethical issues around healthcare and medicine are constantly changing, posing serious challenges for those involved. Practical in focus and regularly updated to reflect new issues that arise – from COVID-19 to the role of AI in healthcare – our MA aims to help you navigate the complex moral and legal considerations surrounding the planning and delivery of healthcare, and associated activities such as medical research. Is it acceptable, for example, to disclose a patient’s medical history to protect others from infectious diseases like HIV? At what point should healthcare professionals stop trying to prolong life? Or, to save a life, should doctors ever overrule a refusal of treatment based cultural or religious reasons or an advance directive? Undertaking a medical ethics course cannot provide all the answers – not least because there are far too many questions to consider, but also because there often is no easy answer. However, it can prepare you to work out answers yourself responsibly, professionally and with integrity. Drawing on real-life and hypothetical cases, research, news and shared experiences, our MA introduces you to relevant concepts, theories and frameworks – highlighting their pros and cons and providing you with a range of analytical tools with which to assess different ethical and legal claims. You’ll also learn to communicate ethical and legal arguments more clearly to others. Working on a range of scenarios and with a focus on practical application, you’ll construct, categorise and criticise different ethical arguments, spotting common fallacies and identifying weaknesses in an argument. For example, students recently considered the moral and legal arguments raised in a 2021 High Court case on the Abortion Act 1967, and whether a provision permitting abortion up until birth in the case of foetal disabilities such as Down Syndrome was discriminatory and in contravention of Human Rights. The course typically attracts a broad range of professionals in healthcare, law and related areas, recent graduates and intercalating medical students, which enriches discussion, debate and shared experiences. In fact, students frequently tell us that what they value most is being exposed to a huge range of contrasting viewpoints, meeting and exchanging ideas with peers who work in different fields and sectors, in other parts of the country, and sometimes the world. Past students have included doctors, nurses, lawyers, health care managers, radiographers, dentists, veterinary practitioners, chaplains, charity and voluntary workers, social workers, hospice directors, hospital administrators, medical and pharmaceutical researchers, research ethics committee members, philosophy, law and bioscience graduates, journalists, and health care educators.

Other courses you might be interested in:

• MA Medical Ethics and Palliative Care
• LLM Law with SQE Preparation
• Enquire about this course

"My MA in Medical Ethics and Law changed the way I think as well as my career trajectory. I am now a Lead Tutor for Ethics and Law education at Manchester University Medical School, a member of a tertiary children’s hospital’s ethics committee and part of my Royal College’s working group on genomics all directly because of the MA. More importantly, my improved ability to frame a question, analyse information and construct answers has totally changed the way I work as a doctor, especially within management and leadership roles. I had to sit back and ask myself questions about why I believed one thing, rather than the other, on numerous occasions and it was a fun, educational and humbling experience. One that I benefitted from and would strongly encourage others to do." Dr David Wright, MA Medical Ethics and Law graduate

Course structure

The programme is purposefully structured in a way that allows you to maintain full-time employment whilst studying, particularly important for students seeking continuing professional development or looking to switch careers. Starting in October, it can be studied over one year full-time, two years part-time or up to five years if you choose to study on a modular basis. Teaching is delivered in short, intense blocks of typically three days’ duration. The part-time programme requires only 13 days attendance in Year 1 and two days in Year 2. On the MA, you will complete 180 credits, which comprises four 30-credit taught modules and a 60-credit dissertation, which is studied over the course of a year on a topic of your choice. The first two modules, which are studied alongside students on the MA in Medical Ethics and Palliative Care, provide a solid introduction to medical ethics and medical law. You’ll also develop your understanding of the language, norms and conventions used when writing or preparing academic arguments in these disciplines. The third and fourth modules apply the skills developed in the first two modules to the analysis of ethical and legal issues arising within the doctor-patient relationship and the broader policy context. Students may exit with a Postgraduate Certificate or a Postgraduate Diploma after successful completion of two or four taught modules. The information below outlines a one-year full-time study schedule. When taken part-time, the four taught modules (three core, one optional) are taken in the first year, with the dissertation being completed in the second year. If you opt for modular study, you will take one or more taught modules per year for a period of up to four years, followed by the dissertation in your final year.

The module details given below are indicative, they are intended to provide you with an idea of the range of subjects that are taught to our current students. The modules that will be available for you to study in future years are prone to change as we regularly review our teaching to ensure that it is up-to-date and informed by the latest research and teaching methods, as well as student voice. The information presented is therefore not intended to be construed and/or relied upon as a definitive list of the modules available in any given year.

Core modules

Moral Theory and Medical Ethics (30 credits, Semester 1) This module provides an overview of the key ethical theories, frameworks and principles that underpin decisions and action by doctors, health providers, patients and families in relation to treatment plans and to achieve a shared goal. You’ll learn to use these tools to analyse practical moral problems in medical and healthcare ethics. Topics covered typically include: consequentialism; deontology; virtue ethics; the ethics of care; principlism; autonomy and paternalism; the ethical foundations of consent; confidentiality and truth-telling. Principles of Medical Law (30 credits, Semester 1) Developing your knowledge of the key principles, cases and statutes in medical law, you’ll learn to critique aspects of medical law and apply your knowledge of the law to practices in medicine and healthcare. Topics covered typically include: introduction to law; use of cases and statutes; law and consent; capacity; professional negligence; mental health law; confidentiality and the law; the relationship between law and morality; adolescent competence, parental responsibility and child decision-making; and human rights.

Life, Death and the Human Body (30 credits, Semester 2) Ranging from abortion and regulation of reproduction to selective reproduction, euthanasia and living organ donation, this module focuses on the often controversial issues surrounding the moral and legal status of humans and human bodies. You will consider the legal and ethical implications for a broad range of issues in healthcare and medicine: interventions at birth and end-of-life, as well as modifications to the human body. Additional indicative topics include advance decisions, terminal sedation, suicide and mental health, court-ordered caesarean section, gender dysphoria, disability and transgender persons.

Medical Ethics and Law Dissertation (60 credits, studied throughout the course) The production of a 15,000 to 20,000-word dissertation provides an exciting opportunity to work under the supervision of an expert in your chosen field of interest, demonstrating a level of knowledge and understanding far beyond what you have learned in class. You’ll be supported to develop the research skills needed to conduct an extended piece of work on a topic of your choice, analysing existing relevant research. While your dissertation must relate to an issue within the broad area of health care law or ethics, you can choose your own topic to reflect your personal or professional interest. Some students start the course with a clear idea about what they want to write about – often an ethical issue from within their own practice – but others find and develop particular interests as the course progresses. Examples of recent dissertation topics which reflect the breadth of the subject include saviour siblings; female genital mutilation versus female genital cosmetic surgery; conversion therapy; AI and robotic surgery; resources and GP virtual consultations; and social media solicitation for organ donation.

Optional modules

Healthcare, Justice and Societ y (30 credits, Semester 2) The ethical and legal implications for healthcare practice extend much further than the practitioners and patients themselves, with ramifications for wider society given the breadth and scope of healthcare services. The aim of this module is to deepen your knowledge and understanding of some of the broader legal obligations in healthcare, including international law and the criminal regulation of medicine. You will consider the moral issues that can arise, for example, in allocating healthcare resources without discrimination for children, young people and adults, not just in hospital settings, but also across secure and detained settings, such as prisons and immigration removal centres. Course content is responsive to contemporary issues, but additional topics may include biomedical research, bio-banking, stem cell policy, conscientious objection in healthcare, psychopathy, criminal transmission of HIV, vaccination policy, pandemic management, and infanticide.

Entry requirements

Intercalating Medical Students We welcome applications from undergraduate medical students who have the option to take an intercalated year. To take the MA in Medical Ethics and Law as an intercalated year, you must normally have completed the fourth year of a medical degree. To ensure the course is completed within one year, you must study the MA in Medical Ethics and Law as a full time student.

The following section details our typical entry requirements for this course for a range of UK and international qualifications. If you don't see your qualifications listed, please contact us to find out if we can accept your qualifications.

Typical offer

Please ensure that you read the full entry requirements by selecting your qualifications from the dropdown menu below. This will include any subject specific, GCSE/Level 2 Maths, and English language requirements you may need.

Please select your country from the drop-down list below for the full entry requirement information

2:2 degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

You will also need: an English language qualification (see below)

60% in a 4-year degree or 3-year degree with a 2-year Master's in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject from a public university or CGPA 2.8 in a 4-year degree or 3-year degree with a 2-year Master's in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject from a private university or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

We don’t accept degrees from certain universities, please see our Bangladesh Country Page for more information

70% or C or a GPA of 2.5 in a degree (Ordinary or Honours) in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

70% in a degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or 65% in a degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject from a '211' university or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

Second class degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

55% or CGPA 6/10 in a degree of at least 3 years in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

60% / 2.4 in a 4-year Bachelor's degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities, or social sciences subject or 65% / CGPA 2.8 in a 3-year Bachelor's degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities, or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

We accept a range of qualifications from Pakistan. Please visit our Pakistan Country Page for more information

or we will consider demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

You will also need an English language qualification (see below)

South Africa

Second class division 2 / 60% in a Bachelor's degree with Honours in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities, or social sciences subject or Second class division 1 / 70% in an Ordinary Bachelor's degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities, or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

55% in a Special Bachelor's degree in a health, psychology, sociology, humanities or social sciences subject or demonstrated relevant professional qualifications or experience

English language requirements

All of our courses require an English language qualification or test. For most students, this requirement can be met with a 4 or C in GCSE English. Please see our English Language guidance pages for further details, including English language test information for international students. For those students who require an English language test, this course requires a test from Group B .

Normally, you will need to provide at least one academic reference to support your application unless you have been out of study longer than two years. If it has been more than two years since you last studied on a degree-level programme, you will normally need to provide an employment reference instead. For more information about Academic References, please see our Postgraduate how to apply web pages .

Personal Statement/Statement of Purpose

Please see our Postgraduate how to apply web pages for guidance on what to include in your personal statement.

Recognition of Prior Learning

The Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is a process which enables applicants to receive recognition and formal credit for learning acquired in the past through formal study or work and life experiences.

RPL can also be requested for admission onto the start of a programme in lieu of the admission requirements. For more information, see our Recognition of Prior Learning web pages .

Professional qualifications and work experience

The majority of our courses will consider relevant work experience and/or professional qualifications at the appropriate level, as an alternative to an undergraduate degree for entry. The work experience should be for a sustained period and at a suitable level, based within a relevant sector to your chosen course.

Admissions staff will review your work experience and/or professional qualifications during the assessment of your application to ensure suitability in terms of relevancy, level and appropriate learning outcomes.

General information

The entry grades outlined in this section indicate the typical offer which would be made to candidates, along with any subject specific requirements. This is for general information only. Keele University reserves the right to vary offer conditions depending upon a candidate's application.

Living costs

Keele University is located on a beautiful campus and has all the facilities of a small town. Student accommodation, shops, restaurants and cafes are all within walking distance of the teaching buildings. This is a very cost effective way to live and to reduce your living costs.

Please note, if your course offers a January start date, the January 2024 start date falls in the 2023/24 academic year. Please see the 2023/24 academic year fees for the relevant fees for starting this course in January 2024.

Planning your funding

It's important to plan carefully for your funding before you start your course. Please be aware that not all postgraduate courses and not all students are eligible for the UK government postgraduate loans and, in some cases, you would be expected to source alternative funding yourself. If you need support researching your funding options, please contact our Financial Support Team.

Scholarships

We are committed to rewarding excellence and potential. Please visit our  bursaries and scholarships  webpages for more information. 

For continuing students, fees will increase annually by RPIX, with a maximum cap of 5% per year.

Your career

This exciting, interdisciplinary course allows you to pursue your ethical and legal interests – for personal or professional reasons – exploring the ethical dilemmas facing healthcare professionals and administrators on a daily basis and delving beyond the ‘soundbite’ rhetoric of media headlines. In addition to the specialist knowledge you’ll gain, you’ll develop a range of essential transferable skills in analysis, critical thinking, problem-solving and communications. This can broaden your career options in a wide variety of roles in medical, legal and ethical fields, ranging from clinical or medical practice to policy-making, teaching or research. For those working in healthcare or related fields, it can build your confidence in handling workplace decisions that have ethical implications, enhancing your knowledge, skills and practice in developing and delivering end-of-life care strategies. It will be especially beneficial if you are, for example, seeking to obtain a position on an ethics committee or direct your career towards strategy development, risk management, research or work in medical defence. Many of our working students study this course out of interest and with a desire to gain specialist knowledge and skills to help them progress within their existing careers. For example, previous students have included junior doctors seeking to become consultants, or bioscience graduates keen to demonstrate their commitment and engagement in pursuit of a medical career, or lawyers seeking to expand their practice in a specific area. The specialist research skills you learn also provide a strong foundation for pursuing further study at doctoral level for those interested in doing so.

Positions may include:

• Hospice director
• Newspaper journalist
• Philosopher
• Policy officer
• Social worker

Teaching, learning and assessment

How you'll be taught.

Run by the School of Law at Keele University, this course is taught by a team of ethicists and legal academics who are both active researchers and experienced in delivering postgraduate medical ethics education. Interactive and practical teaching methods include lectures, seminars, group work and case studies. Ethics is not a spectator sport and you’ll be encouraged to engage in discussion and debate from the outset. From time to time, experts from outside Keele may be invited to speak on the course, providing alternative academic and professional perspectives. Past speakers have included, for example, the CEO of St Giles Hospice, as well as distinguished graduates of the course, such as Dr Joe Brierley, Consultant in paediatric and neonatal intensive care, and Director of the Paediatric Bioethics Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London. Students frequently tell us that what they value most from this course is being exposed to a huge range of contrasting viewpoints, meeting and exchanging ideas with peers who work in different fields and sectors in other parts of the country, sometimes the world. Teaching takes place in three-day blocks and we often organise an informal meal during the first block so you can get to know your staff and fellow students. You are welcome to come to Keele between blocks to meet with your academic mentor or supervisor, attend talks by visiting speakers, and use other university facilities, though you can keep in touch via email, phone or videoconferencing if you live further away. As part of the course, you will receive lots of academic training and support, for example, in how to write essays and construct arguments in ethical issues. On the Moral Theory and Medical Ethics module, you’ll be introduced to the norms and conventions of academic argument and writing in applied ethics, while the Principles of Medical Law module covers writing law essays, preparing legal arguments and referencing. You will be allocated an academic mentor, who can provide pastoral and academic support. You also have the option of 1:1 appointments with learning development advisors.

Teaching schedule

The 2024 in-person teaching schedule for the taught modules is outlined below. Please note, we reserve the right to changes these dates in exceptional circumstances.

Outside of the taught elements, you will be able to consult with supervisors and will have access to the University’s learning and teaching facilities, and support services. 

Induction day

• Tuesday 1 October 2024.
• Moral Theory and Medical Ethics: Wednesday 2 - Friday 4 October 2024. 
• Principles of Medical Law:  Wednesday 27 - Friday 29 November 2024.
• Life, Death and the Human Body:  Wednesday 29 - Friday 30 January 2025.
• Dissertation: Monday 14 October 2024 and Tuesday 25 March 2025.
• Healthcare, Justice and Society:  Wednesday 26 - Friday 28 March 2025.

How you’ll be assessed

There are no exams on this course. Instead, at the end of each module, you will be required to write a 5,000-word essay, as well as your final dissertation. For each module, you will have a choice of questions reflecting the topics covered in the teaching. You will receive feedback on your essay during the subsequent teaching block, enabling continuous improvement over the duration of the course.

Keele Postgraduate Association

Keele University is one of a handful of universities in the UK to have a dedicated students' union for postgraduate students. A fully registered charity, Keele Postgraduate Association serves as a focal point for the social life and welfare needs of all postgraduate students during their time at Keele.

Hugely popular, the KPA Clubhouse (near Horwood Hall) provides a dedicated postgraduate social space and bar on campus, where you can grab a bite to eat and drink, sit quietly and read a book, or switch off from academic life at one of the many regular events organised throughout the year. The KPA also helps to host a variety of conferences, as well as other academic and career sessions, to give you and your fellow postgraduates the opportunities to come together to discuss your research, and develop your skills and networks.

Our expertise

Teaching staff.

For 35 years, Keele School of Law has been at the forefront of medical ethics and law education, having first delivered the MA in Medical Ethics and Law back in 1987, followed shortly by the MA Medical Ethics and Palliative Care. You’ll be taught by staff with a broad range of expertise in the distinct disciplines of philosophy and law.

Teaching team includes:

Dr Kevin De Sabbata , Lecturer in Law with research interests in healthcare law and ethics, mental health law, global health law, and disability rights.

Dr Jonathan Hughes , Senior Lecturer in Ethics – a philosopher with research interests in the ethics relating to conscientious objection in healthcare, autism and neurodiversity, resource allocation, risk and the precautionary principle, end of life issues.

Dr Abigail Pearson , Lecturer in Law with research interests in disability, equality, human rights and legal education.

Dr Laura Pritchard-Jones , Senior Lecturer in Law with research interests in mental disability law, adult safeguarding, and the legal framework around social care provision for adults.

Dr Sotirios Santatzoglou , Lecturer in Law with interests in medical negligence and end-of-life criminal law.

Professor Anthony Wrigley , Professor of Ethics – a philosopher whose research focuses on ethical and policy issues, including new genetic and reproductive technologies, consent for those who have lost capacity, and end-of-life care.

Dr Dunja Begović, Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics - Research interests include ethico-legal aspects of reproduction and the end of life.

With a critical and inter-disciplinary approach to law and social justice, the School of Law is an internationally recognised centre for legal research with a longstanding tradition of excellence in moral philosophy, applied ethics, doctrinal, and socio-legal scholarship. Supported by a specialist Law Librarian, the Law library in the main University library has an extensive range of electronic resources and online legal databases, and stocks a range of law journals, professional resources, case reports, statutes, text books and research monographs. You’ll have access to copies of core texts within the School. Based in the main Chancellor’s Building, right at the heart of campus, we offer a range of additional student learning resources and facilities. This includes our Moot Room, a model courtroom used for extra-curricular mooting activities, and a refurbished room dedicated for postgraduate taught students on the second floor. Equipped with networked pcs, an adjustable workstation and a meeting table, it’s great place to continue your discussions or chat between classes.

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20 Captivating Ideas For A Graduate Dissertation In Health Law

For health law, or any other paper that you need to write, you have to come up with captivating ideas. There are so many people who have been able to try this company and the results were incredible, so you should do the same thing too.

When it comes to health law, like any other legal auspice, there is so much that you can discuss and at the same time, there are always two sides to a coin. It is therefore important that you take time and do some good research before you are able to present your work accordingly.

The following are some good ideas that you should consider when planning on writing a paper like this one:

• Discuss how health law can be used to protect the lives of indigenous people
• Explain some of the arguments that have been presented against the health care reforms
• Discuss the content of health care reform
• Explain the content of the patient protection and affordable care act
• Discuss how important the family and medical leave act is
• Explain the impact of legalizing marijuana
• Discuss the challenges facing the needles and syringes exchange program
• Explain how regulating food production affects the health law
• Discuss how food contamination can be avoided through health law
• Discuss the challenges that health law faces based on religious confines
• Why is the affordable healthcare law an important part of the legal confine?
• Discuss how law and ethical accountability go hand in hand
• Explain the challenges that the American healthcare system faces
• Briefly address the asbestos usage, and explain how this affects the people’s health
• Discuss how healthcare fraud is fast becoming a huge challenge in the world today
• Explain the role of the World Health Organization in the enforcement of health law
• Based on relevant health law, discuss some of the challenges that are affecting the effectiveness of telepsychiatry
• Discuss why home health journals must always be vetted and passed for approval before they can be presented to the mass populace
• Based on relevant health laws, discuss the challenge that is currently being experienced in the form of Ebola
• Discuss the lessons that we can learn from the Indian health service, which can be used as relevant case studies elsewhere.

• LLM Health Law

Health Law LLM

• Level(s) of Study: Postgraduate taught
• Start Date(s): September 2024
• Duration: One year full-time, two years part-time
• Study Mode(s): Full-time / Part-time
• Campus: City Campus
• Entry Requirements: More information

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Introduction:

This course addresses the growing interest in the interface of medicine and law.  With the increasing pressure on resource allocation within the National Health Service and current debates on an individual’s capacity to consent or refuse medical treatment, there is growing need for qualified legal professionals with an understanding of health law.

About the LLM Health Law

This course examines general principles such as consent to treatment and medical ethics, together with more specialist areas of Health Law including the law relating to:

• regulation of healthcare quality
• mental health law
• employer and health law.

You will gain an insight into key areas of law relating to the practice of medicine in the UK, taking into account EU legislation and international health norms.

Why choose LLM Health Law?

• Gain an in-depth understanding of Health Law in a European and international context.
• Learn from expert teaching staff.
• Option to complement your study of Health Law with up two modules from other LLM subject areas .
• Full-time and part-time study routes.
• Attend an International Summer School and explore Law in a European context.
• Scholarships available.
• Individual modules can be studied for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) awards. Email us for details.
• NTU is 3rd for number of PGT students studying Law (Latest HESA data 2021/22)

What you’ll study

LLM Health Law will involve you in the study of key issues relating to legal principles applied in the context of health and medicine. You will be supported in gaining high-level understanding of the organisational, regulatory and legal structures underpinning medical and health practice. Based on these fundamentals you will have the opportunity to develop critical insights into a range of specialist areas in the field. In particular as the law relates to medical innovation, consent, mental health, beginning and ending of life issues and the use of human tissue.

The course incorporates a strong emphasis on ethics based critiques of legal approaches to health and medicine. Similarly you will be supported in developing a sophisticated international perspective on the issues in particular through the lens of human rights approaches.

• Course modules

You will study six  taught modules followed by a dissertation.

Core module

Regulation of healthcare quality.

This module aims to examine the key areas of law relating to the practice of medicine in the UK, taking into account EU legislation and international health norms.  There will be particular focus on the law relating to medical malpractice, clinical governance, quality of healthcare, medication safety and patient centred care, including the protection of confidential information.

Optional modules

Employer and health law.

This module aims to foster an understanding of the obligation of employers to care for the health of employees, particularly in the context of employees in a health care setting.

Mental Capacity and Mental Health Law

The module aims to identify and critically analyse the conceptual underpinnings and law relating to consent to medical treatment in the UK, mental capacity under the Mental Capacity Act and the civil law provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983.

Beginning and Ending of Life

The module supports students in the identification and critical exploration of the legal and ethical issues in two key respects relating to human life. The first, concerning the beginning of human life, focuses on ethical and legal issues relevant to the of use of assisted reproduction technology and conduct affecting the human embryo/foetus during pregnancy or resulting in that pregnancy coming to an end. The second involves detailed consideration of ethical and legal implications of ending of life issues in a medical context.  The particular focus of this component of the module is the intentional shortening and assistance, in the shortening of life, and the withdrawing and withholding of life-maintaining intervention where the shortening of life is not intended.

Medical Use of the Human Body

The module aims to support students in gaining a critical appreciation of the conceptual aspects of medical use of the human body and critically explore it as a phenomenon. In doing so students are encouraged to adopt philosophical constructs and ethical principles as a means of developing a critical perspective on what constitutes appropriate constraint of medical use.

Global Innovation and Intellectual Property

This module critically develops the key issues underpinning innovation and the discipline of patent law, including their application in UK and internationally, often in a public health and sustainable development context.

• You can select up to five  modules from any subject area. We do advise you to select modules from the above options if possible.

Dissertation

You will start your dissertation after completing these modules.

The dissertation is an extended piece of academic work, independently researched and written. You will be supported in your work by one-to-one supervision from a tutor expert in the chosen field. Subject to academic suitability and the availability of an appropriately expert tutor, you may select your own area of study for the dissertation phase of the course.

Please note modules run subject to sufficient student numbers.

Further information on what you'll study

Please be aware that all optional/elective modules are subject to availability, and NTU reserves the right to amend, change or withdraw modules at its discretion.

Don’t just take our word for it, hear from our students themselves

Student profiles, eunice deladem ohenewaa mensah.

NTU is a beautiful community full of amazing people who are supportive. [You] should enjoy every second as I have and contribute to building a beautiful environment for future generations.

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How you’re taught

The academic year for the LLM courses is split into three parts: two ten-week terms (Term One runs from the beginning of the academic year until the Christmas vacation, Term Two between Christmas and Easter) and the summer period.

Full-time students – who complete the course over one academic year – study three modules in each term and complete the dissertation over the summer.

Part-time students – who complete the course over two academic years – study three modules across Terms One and Two in each year (six in total), beginning work on researching their dissertation during the first summer period and completing it during the second.

On the full-time and part-time modes modules are taught throughout the week. Depending on your timetable you may be expected to attend on more than one day. Modules may exceptionally be rescheduled due to course needs.

Seminars are led by academics but will usually require you to carry out extensive guided preparatory work and will often involve short presentations or other contributions.

In each case modules are assessed through one piece of course work. This usually takes the form of a problem- or essay-style question, but will vary by module. You can submit and receive feedback on assessments over the course of each module.

Your dissertation will be assessed through a research based written assignment of 12,000 words. The topic that you choose for your dissertation should be relevant to the course specialism and the chosen title will be subject to approval by the Course Leader.

Additionally, you will complete a reflective report consisting of pre-set questions, each with a maximum word count attributed to it; approximately 250 words, i.e. 1000 words in total. Your reflective report will be assessed by way of competence or non-competence.

Expert Teaching Staff

Our courses are taught by academics with significant subject expertise. The School’s vocational focus and strong links with the legal profession mean that many of our academic staff members have extensive practical experience. The courses also have a strong research base. Our academic staff actively research and publish, and many are recognised as being among the leading experts in their fields.

Research Expertise

We have a number of internationally recognised experts in a wide range of legal areas. We also have a  Health Law and Ethics Research Group .

Access to Resources

Nottingham Law School is delighted to announce that it will continue to provide access to the Oxford University Press (OUP) online resource - Law Trove.

Law Trove provides online access to a range of online resources, including over 200 textbooks published by OUP, and covers core and optional subject areas. Students on all courses will be provided with unlimited access to the resources within Law Trove in order to further enhance your experience during your time with us.

Research informed teaching

By daring to think differently our research is tackling real-world issues. The subjects you will study with us are informed by our research so you can be sure your knowledge will be cutting-edge in your field. In the last  Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) - the UK's system for assessing the quality and impact of research in universities - we’re proud that 100% of NTU's Law submission was assessed to be world-leading or internationally excellent.

Staff Profiles

Austen garwood-gowers - associate professor.

Nottingham Law School

Azhin Omer - Senior Lecturer

Chinemelum arinze-umobi - lecturer, miss nashmil motazedi - senior lecturer, careers and employability.

Your future career Career development is an integral part of the programme and our careers team run a series of workshops where you can identify methods and strategies to enable you to pursue your career goals.

Due to the School's excellent reputation within the legal profession, our graduates are highly sought-after and recognised for the depth and relevance of their knowledge. 99% of our postgraduate Law School students are employed or engaged in further study six months after graduating (DLHE, postgraduate leavers 2016/17).

Continuing professional development (CPD) Practitioners can study individual modules from the LLM programme for CPD awards.

Nottingham Law School offers a suite of practice-based practitioner programmes specifically designed to meet the personal development needs of legal practitioners. We offer courses that qualify for CPD with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, in-house training and bespoke programmes. These courses are highly flexible and can be delivered throughout the year both nationally and internationally.

While this course does not currently offer placements we do encourage our students to pursue placement opportunities.

Find out about the opportunities available through our pro bono and University volunteering schemes .

Learn a new language

Alongside your study you also have the opportunity to learn a new language. The University Language Programme (ULP) is available to all students and gives you the option of learning a totally new language or improving the skills you already have.

Learning a new language can:

• enhance your communication skills
• enrich your experience when travelling abroad
• boost your career prospects.

Find out more about the University Language Programme.

Re:search Re:imagined

To us, research is about more than writing papers and proposing new ideas. By daring to think differently, we’re disrupting the research landscape and finding the answers to the questions that really matter. From social media addiction to sustainable farming, we’re inspiring the brightest minds to rise up and find solutions to some of the most significant global challenges facing society

Campus and facilities

Entry requirements.

• International

What are we looking for?

• A good law degree, 2.2 or above.
• Applicants whose first degree is not Law will be required to provide evidence of commitment to the LLM subject that they wish to study.
• Applicants from other disciplines will be welcomed in appropriate circumstances, particularly if they have experience in the area, even if not as lawyers.

We specify these minimum entry requirements, but we will assess you individually on your ability to benefit from the course. We sometimes offer places on the basis of non-standard entry qualifications, and industrial or professional experience.

Recognition of Prior Learning

NTU may admit a student with advanced standing beyond the beginning of a course, through an assessment of that student's prior learning, whether it is certificated or uncertificated. Our  Recognition of Prior Learning and Credit Transfer Policy outlines the process and options available to these prospective students, such as recognising experiential learning or transferring to a similar course at another institution, otherwise known as credit transfer.

All prospective students who wish to apply via Recognition of Prior Learning should initially contact the central  Admissions and Enquiries Team who will be able to support you through the process.

Getting in touch

If you need more help or information, get in touch through our enquiry form

International qualifications

We accept qualifications from all over the world – check yours here:

• Entry requirements by country

English language entry requirements

You can meet our language requirements by successfully completing our pre-sessional English course for an agreed length of time, or by submitting the required grade in one of our accepted English language tests, such as IELTS:

• English language requirements
• Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (PEAP)

Postgraduate preparation courses (Pre-Masters)

If you don’t yet meet our entry requirements, we offer Pre-Masters courses through our partner Nottingham Trent International College (NTIC), based on our City Campus:

• Pre-Masters courses leading to postgraduate study at NTU

Foundation courses

If you need to do a foundation course to meet our course requirements please visit  Nottingham Trent International College (NTIC) . If you’re already studying in the UK at a school or college and would like to know if we can accept your qualification please visit our  international courses page .

Would you like some advice on your study plans?

Our international teams are highly experienced in answering queries from students all over the world. We also have members of staff based in Vietnam, China, India and Nigeria and work with a worldwide network of education counsellors.

• Complete this simple form to keep in touch with the International Office.

Fees and funding

Home fees for 2024 entry.

Please note that if you are considering a course that runs over more than one year, the tuition fee stated is for the first year of study. The course fee for the second year may be subject to annual review.

Funding your studies

Preparing for the financial side of student life is important, but there’s no need to feel anxious and confused about it. We hope that our  fees and  funding pages will answer all your questions.

You might be able to get a scholarship to help fund your studies. We award  scholarships to those students who can demonstrate excellent achievement, passion and dedication to their studies.

Please take a look at our  postgraduates’ guide funding page for information about sourcing grants, bursaries and scholarships, and much more.

For more advice and guidance, you can contact our Student Financial Support Service.

Tel:  +44 (0)115 848 2494

International / EU fees for 2024 entry

Scholarships

We offer scholarships of up to 50% of your tuition fee. You can apply for your scholarship when you have an offer to study at NTU.

• International Scholarships

Living costs

Get advice on the cost of living as an international student in Nottingham and how to budget:

• Managing your money

Paying fees

Find out about advanced payments, instalment plan options and how to make payments securely to the University:

• How and when to pay your fees

How to apply

Just click the Apply button at the top of the page and follow the instructions for applying. Make sure you check the entry requirements above carefully before you do.

If you are interested in joining us in September 2025, this course will be open for applications through the applicant portal from September 2024. Courses starting in January 2026 will be open for applications from July 2025.

Writing your application

Be honest, thorough and persuasive in your application. Remember, we can only make a decision based on what you tell us. Make sure you include as much information as possible, including uploading evidence of results already achieved, as well as a personal statement.

Keeping up to date

After you’ve applied, we’ll be sending you important emails throughout the application process - so check your emails regularly, including your junk mail folder.

You can get more information and advice about applying to NTU in our postgraduates’ guide .

If you need any more help or information, please contact our Admissions Team or call  +44 (0)115 848 4200 .

Good luck with your application!

Apply online through our  NTU applicant portal .

Application advice

Apply early so that you have enough time to prepare – processing times for Student visas can vary, for example.  After you've applied, we'll be sending you important emails throughout the application process – so check your emails regularly, including your junk mail folder.

• Follow our guide to the application process

Writing your personal statement

Be honest, thorough, and persuasive – we can only make a decision about your application based on what you tell us:

• Advice on writing a good personal statement

Postgraduate research

If you’re applying for postgraduate research please visit our Research pages for information about our research areas and how to make your application.

The University's commitment to delivering the educational services advertised .

You may also be interested in:

Human rights.

LLM Human Rights

Find out more

LLM Sports Law

Alternatively, use our A–Z index

Attend an open day

Download our course brochure

Discover more about Law at Manchester

LLM Healthcare Ethics and Law

Year of entry: 2024

• View full page

We require a UK bachelor's degree with a First or Upper Second (2.1) classification or the overseas equivalent in Law. Candidates should demonstrate a strong background in Law modules relevant to the course, including Public Law and Contract Law and achieve scores of 2.1 or above in relevant modules.  

When assessing your academic record, we consider the grades you have achieved and the standing of the institution where you studied your qualification.

Full entry requirements

Apply online

If you would like to study this course 100% online, please check out the Healthcare Ethics and Law online learning page. 

Course options

Course overview.

• Develop your knowledge of medical law, and how medical law is shaped by ethical arguments and concerns.
• Take a course that is both flexible and interdisciplinary, and comes with a solid legal component.
• Apply bioethical and legal theory to real-world scenarios.

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These are an opportunity to find out about the course, meet students and staff, and tour the campus and facilities.

If you receive an offer, we will invite you to a visit day where you learn about the School, teaching and learning, study opportunities and student life.

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2024, the tuition fees are as follows:

• LLM (full-time) UK students (per annum): £15,500 International, including EU, students (per annum): £28,500
• LLM (part-time) UK students (per annum): £7,750 International, including EU, students (per annum): £14,250
• LLM (part-time distance learning) UK students (per annum): £13,000 International, including EU, students (per annum): £25,000

Further information for EU students can be found on our dedicated EU page.

The fees quoted above will be fully inclusive for the course tuition, administration and computational costs during your studies.

All fees for entry will be subject to yearly review and incremental rises per annum are also likely over the duration of courses lasting more than a year for UK/EU students (fees are typically fixed for International students, for the course duration at the year of entry). For general fees information please visit: postgraduate fees . Always contact the department if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Self-funded international applicants for this course will be required to pay a deposit of £1000 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. This deposit will only be refunded if immigration permission is refused. We will notify you about how and when to make this payment.

Policy on additional costs

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

Scholarships/sponsorships

Manchester Alumni Scholarship Scheme

The Manchester Alumni Scholarship Scheme offers a £3,000 reduction in tuition fees to University of Manchester alumni who achieved a first-class bachelor's degree and are progressing to a postgraduate taught master's course.

Manchester Humanities International Excellence Scholarship

The University of Manchester is proud to offer scholarship awards to exceptional international students.

Manchester Master's Bursary

The University of Manchester is committed to widening participation in master's study and allocates 75 awards of £4,000 each year.

Postgraduate loans for master's students

If you're coming to Manchester this year to begin postgraduate study, you could qualify for a loan from the UK government.

For more information on our awards, see fees and funding or search the University's postgraduate funding database .

• Commonwealth Scholarships and Fellowships Plan (CSFP) General Scholarship

Contact details

See: School Subjects

Courses in related subject areas

Use the links below to view lists of courses in related subject areas.

Entry requirements

Academic entry qualification overview, english language.

Applicants whose first language is not English should meet the following language requirements:

• IELTS Academic test score of 7 overall, including 7 in writing with no further component score below 6.5
• TOEFL IBT 100 with 25 in writing and no further score below 22 in each section. TOEFL code for Manchester is 0757
• Pearson Test of English (PTE) score of 76 overall, with 76 in writing and no further score below 70

Pre-Sessional English Courses

We will consider applicants who do not meet these scores but you may be required to complete a pre-sessional English language course at the University of Manchester prior to the start of the course.

To be considered for a pre-sessional English language course for this programme we require the following minimum IELTS (Academic) scores:

6 Week Pre-Sessional Course : IELTS 6.5 overall with 6.5 in writing and no more than one sub-skill of 6.0.

10 Week Pre-sessional Course : IELTS 6.0 overall with 6.0 or above in each sub-skill 

If you have not yet completed your current academic study and are interested in studying a pre-sessional course, you must hold an IELTS for UKVI (Academic) test certificate to ensure that you are eligible for a separate visa for the English language course.

English language test validity

Some English Language test results are only valid for two years. Your English Language test report must be valid on the start date of the course.

Applicants from Majority English-speaking countries

If you are a national of a   majority English-speaking country   (or have studied for a full bachelor's degree or higher from one of these countries) you may be exempt from submitting further evidence of English language proficiency.

Other international entry requirements

We accept a range of qualifications from across the globe. To help international students, the university provides specific information for many individual countries. Please see our   country-specific information page   for guidance on the academic and English language qualifications which may be accepted from your country.

Application and selection

How to apply, advice to applicants.

As there is a high demand for our courses we operate a staged admissions process with selection deadlines throughout the year. Due to the competition for places and high quality of applications that we receive, we give preference to students from high ranking institutions and with grades above our minimum entry requirements.

Please ensure you submit all supporting documentation with your application before the application deadline to avoid a delay in processing.

Applications for 2024 entry:

Stage 1:   Application received by  8th December 2023 ; Application update by  22nd February 2024

Stage 2:   Application received by  3rd March 2024 ; Application update by  25th April 2024

Stage 3:   Application received by  5th May 2024 ; Application update by  8th June 2024

Stage 4:  Application received by  1st July 2024 ; Application update by  25th July 2024

Whilst we aim to give you a decision on your application by the deadline date, in some instances due to the competition for places and the volume of applications received, it may be necessary to roll your application forward to the next deadline date.

Applications received after our final selection deadline will be considered at our discretion if places are still available.

Please note:  All places are subject to availability and if you apply at one of the later stages, some courses may already be reaching capacity or be closed to further applications. We, therefore, recommend that you apply early in the cycle to avoid disappointment.

If you are successful in receiving an offer, you will be required to pay a tuition fee deposit of £1,000 by the deadline stated in your offer letter to confirm your place. We ask for the deposit as competition for places is high and there is limited availability.  The deposit amount is then deducted from your tuition fees when you register on the course.

Re-applications

Course details, course description.

The LLM in Healthcare Ethics and Law provides high-quality education in healthcare ethics and healthcare law. There is an emphasis on the application of bioethical and legal theory to real-world scenarios, catering to the practical needs of healthcare and legal professionals and those in related fields.

You will study a wide variety of ethical and legal subjects including:

• refusal of treatment;
• confidentiality;
• the moral status of the foetus;
• resource allocation;
• genetic testing;
• HIV testing;
• medical malpractice;
• clinical negligence;
• organ and tissue transplantation;
• fertility treatment;
• genetic manipulation;
• research ethics;
• stem cell research;
• euthanasia.

This course requires the study of both ethics and law, but with a bias towards law in the taught units. On the distance learning course, all options taken must be law-based. On the campus-based course, the majority of options should be law-based.

This course will allow you to develop an expert knowledge and understanding of bioethical and medico-legal theories, and the skills needed to apply them to real world scenarios in a diverse range of contexts.

You will also develop the ethical and medico-legal knowledge and research skills required for writing a master's level dissertation, and will be well prepared for further research if you so desire.

Teaching and learning

Teaching tends to defy the traditional boundaries associated with lectures and seminars.

Generally, each class in a course unit has a duration of two or three hours per week, and is split roughly between a formal, didactic period and a structured discussion period (most often based on the so-called, challenge-response model).

Nevertheless, each class is considered a seminar or lecture, and attendance of all classes of a course unit for which you are enrolled is compulsory. For course units of 15 credit value, there will generally be 15 hours of face-to-face teaching throughout the semester in which the unit is delivered, and twice that amount for 30 credit units.

Coursework and assessment

Assessment of all taught course units (to a total of 120 credits) is assessed by coursework in the form of essays totalling 4500 words for each of the compulsory 30-credit units, and 3000-word essays for each of the optional 15-credit units.

In addition, to complete the LLM, you must submit a 10,000-12,000 word dissertation by independent research (60 credits); no dissertation is required for the PGDip or PGCert. Part-time students undertake a supervised dissertation in the summer months of Year 2.

If you do not successfully complete the MA, you may be considered for the award of the Postgraduate Diploma. 

If you do not successfully complete the Postgraduate Diploma, you may be considered for the award of the Postgraduate Certificate. 

The awards of the MA or Postgraduate Diploma are classified according to pass, merit and distinction. The Postgraduate Certificate is awarded unclassified.

Course unit details

You will be required to complete 180 credits:

• 120 credits comprised of taught course units (each of 15 or 30 credit value);
• and an independent research element worth 60 credits. This will be a dissertation of up to 12,000 words that you will write over the summer months of the course, from May until September.

On the full-time course, the 120 taught credits can be split in one of two ways:

• 60 credits in each of the two semesters;
• or 75 credits in semester one and 45 credits in semester two.

If you are registered on the LLM Healthcare Ethics and Law course, you would need to select a majority of your optional course units from the law list (Mental Health Law and Policy; Medicine, Law and Society; Children, Medicine and the Law). Global Health Law and Bioethics can count as an ethics or law course.

Course unit list

The course unit details given below are subject to change, and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.

Scholarships and bursaries

Manchester Alumni Scholarship Scheme:

Manchester Humanities International Excellence Scholarship:

The University of Manchester is proud to offer scholarship awards to exceptional international students commencing their postgraduate studies across subjects in its Faculty of Humanities from September 2022

Manchester Master's Bursary:

For more information on our awards, see fees and funding or search the University's postgraduate funding database . 

What our students say

At The University of Manchester Law School, you are supported by the first-class resources you would expect of a top law school. 

In addition to the networked study spaces at the Williamson Building, you can access a specialist moot courtroom, enabling future legal minds to hone your debating skills in a realistic court setting. 

You also have access to The University of Manchester Library , which houses a substantial collection of law books and periodicals, as well as texts to support you.

Disability support

Career opportunities.

Successful graduates are able to progress within a wide variety of roles in the Medical, Legal and Ethical fields.  

Graduates from previous years have, for example, proceeded to specialise in Medico-Legal practice and academic careers, and the degrees have enhanced the careers of health care professionals. 

The University has its own dedicated Careers Service that you would have full access to as a student and for two years after you graduate. At Manchester you will have access to a number of opportunities to help boost your employability .

Healthcare Law & Ethics LLM

School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

A masters degree for healthcare professionals who want to learn about legal and ethical aspects of professional practice

This course will help you to gain an understanding of how law and ethics apply to the practice of healthcare professionals. It will give you an appreciation of relevant legal and ethical issues, terminology, sources of law and the ways in which law and ethics work in practice.

You can study at a time and place of your own choosing and at a pace that is comfortable for you. Most of our graduates have completed their studies while working full-time as healthcare professionals.

Some of the topics which are explored in this course include legal and ethical issues relating to:

• patients’ consent to treatment
• clinical negligence
• patient confidentiality
• genetic selection
• maternal-fetal conflict
• withdrawing and withholding treatment
• euthanasia and assisted suicide
• pharmaceutical product liability
• the regulation of clinical drug trials
• patient capacity and competence
• the treatment of children
• research and the incompetent patient
• organ donation and
• treating the mentally ill patient

Our focus is primarily on UK law, but as it may be studied by healthcare professionals who are based elsewhere, the course occasionally makes reference to materials from other jurisdictions, particularly the USA.

Lieutenant Commander Allan Brockie RN, LLM Healthcare Law and Ethics graduate

If you have any questions about the admissions process, studying, or living in Dundee, please contact us

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• Improved motor vehicle safety
• Safer workplaces
• Reduced tooth decay

Further, law is playing an increasingly important role in addressing emerging public health threats such as

• Childhood obesity
• Healthcare-associated infections
• Motor vehicle injuries
• Prescription drug overdoses

Former CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan established the Public Health Law Program (PHLP) in 2000 after consultations with CDC programs and extramural partners to lead the agency's public health law efforts. PHLP is currently in the National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce .

PHLP works to improve the health of the public by developing law-related tools and providing legal technical assistance to public health practitioners and policy makers in state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) jurisdictions.

PHLP works with STLT public health departments and other partners to:

• Identify public health law priorities
• Research laws that impact the public's health
• Analyze public health legal preparedness
• Conduct comparative analyses across jurisdictions
• Prepare guidance, articles, reports, and toolkits
• Develop and disseminate public health law curricula

If you would like more information about PHLP, please send us a request for more information .

Are you a student interested in earning academic credit while learning how law can be used to protect and promote the public's health? Learn more .

• Public Health Infrastructure Center , Public Health Law Program

Public Health Law

The Public Health Law Program works to improve the health of the public by developing law-related tools and providing legal technical assistance to public health practitioners and policy makers in state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) jurisdictions.

Health Care Providers

Public health.

Imagine if the government offered dental care. New federal rule could make that a reality.

Even when she had a massive infection and grueling pain from a cracked tooth, Nicole Sutton could not get a dentist to provide timely care.

Sutton, a single mother based in Tampa, Florida, could only get herself on a waitlist where she got in line to see one of the few dentists who take Medicaid, the government insurance for low-income families. She visited a hospital emergency room and a federally funded community health center, but those appointments only yielded prescriptions for antibiotics and pain pills. Neither offered to treat her dental crisis.  

It wasn’t until she secured a loan from a friend that she could afford to see a specialist and an oral surgeon who extracted her tooth in an emergency procedure. Both demanded cash upfront.

It took months to clear the infection and return to health. The protracted dental episode two years ago exposed Sutton to the lurking disaster millions of Americans face because they don’t have robust dental insurance that guarantees access to oral care . A solution from the federal government may be forthcoming, which could have made a huge difference for Sutton.

“A dental infection can kill you,” Sutton said.  “Yes, there's pain, but it can also really impact your health.”

Introducing Affordable Care Act dental insurance

Americans experience dental emergencies every year and the U.S. health care system is ill-equipped to help them, according to advocates.

The Affordable Care Act extended health insurance to tens of millions of Americans, through federal and state marketplaces that sell subsidized health insurance and Medicaid expansion adopted by all but 10 states.

But President Barack Obama's signature 2010 health care law excluded dental coverage for adults. The health law required states to offer pediatric dental care as an essential health benefit for ACA plans.

In a move last month that received little fanfare, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give states the option of adding adult dental insurance coverage as part of their Affordable Care Act plans.

In another attempt to bolster dental coverage, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Friday introduced the Comprehensive Dental Care Reform Act of 2024, a bill that would expand dental coverage through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration and increase the number of dentists, dental hygienists and dental therapists nationwide.

The deficit in dental coverage is immense: Nearly 69 million U.S. adults did not have dental insurance or access to routine oral health care last year, according to a survey by the nonprofit CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. Millions more lost dental insurance last year when states began to unwind Medicaid coverage for people who signed up during the COVID-19 pandemic.

People who don't have coverage often wait before seeking care, and minor infections turn into life-threatening ordeals, advocates say. Those who rely on safety net programs such as Medicaid or community health centers that are federally qualified often end up on wait lists and struggle to get timely dental appointments. Only 1 in 3 U.S. dentists agree to take care of Medicaid patients. Even fewer dentists see a lot of Medicaid patients.

Dentists can limit which insurance plans they take and require uninsured patients to pay cash upfront. Others steer patients to credit-card-style companies that extend credit with high interest rates. Under the arrangement, dentists get paid immediately, and patients get bills and face high-interest penalties if they don't pay the balance during a grace period of several months.

Advocates like Melissa Burroughs, director of public policy at CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, aim to level the playing field, making dental care accessible to all.

“For far too many people in this country, oral health care is unaffordable and out of reach,” Burroughs said. “And that's largely because there are very significant gaps in insurance.”

Under Biden's rule, states have until 2025 to decide whether to mandate that insurers cover dental benefits for adults. The dental benefits would not take effect until 2027. No states have publicly signaled yet that they intend to require ACA dental benefits in 2027, however, advocates say the new rule could represent a significant expansion of dental insurance, which gets less scrutiny than medical insurance for hospital, doctor and pharmacy bills.

Sanders has rallied for dental reforms for more than a decade. In 2022, the senator unsuccessfully pushed for Medicare to provide comprehensive dental coverage for older Americans. During a hearing Thursday of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee he chairs, Sanders said tens of millions of American adults either can't afford or are unable to get necessary dental care. The hearing featured testimony from dentists, advocates and academics who discussed the depths of the challenge of providing nationwide oral care access.

"This is an issue we do not discuss enough," Sanders told the committee. "It is a crisis issue."

Advocates cheered the renewed attention to dental health insurance. The Biden rule is "pretty monumental" because it could pave the way for more robust dental coverage, said Colin Reusch, senior adviser for oral health policy at Community Catalyst, a health advocacy organization.

Reusch said about a half dozen states have previously explored the possibility of adding adult dental benefits, but, he said, it's too early to say whether any would consider adding coverage under the Biden rule.

Americans are more likely to skip dental care because of the cost than to forego other types of health care such as costly doctor visits or prescriptions.

Dental coverage and access is "one of the places where people face significant affordability barriers," Reusch said. "In fact, dental coverage presents a higher out-of-pocket burden compared to just about any other category of health care."

'Beauty and smiles' stymied by gum disease

New York City native Shaena Morris became accustomed to top-notch medical and dental care as a child and young adult. She took diligent care of her teeth, getting routine cleanings and checkups.

But when she moved to Florida with her family a decade ago, she could no longer count on timely appointments or access to care.

When her gums became inflamed after the birth of her first child, one dentist recommended a $4,000 deep cleaning that her dental insurer, Medicaid, would not cover. Now a resident of Dania Beach, Florida, Morris has cycled on and off of a public health insurance program as her household income has changed. Even when she's on Medicaid, she often cannot get timely appointments or coverage of dental specialists that she needs.

Beyond dealing with pain and discomfort, she feels her inconsistent dental care has harmed her career as a cosmetologist doing hair and makeup for the likes of Paris Hilton. She believes her clients and managers have noticed her dental problems. She ultimately walked away from a profession she'd been in for nearly two decades because of what limited dental care did to her oral health.

"Beauty and smiles − that's my life," Morris said. "My talent can no longer sustain me because people need you to look like Photoshop."

Dental care and job prospects

About 30% of low-income adults nationwide and nearly 60% of Medicaid beneficiaries without dental access believe the appearance of their mouth and teeth has limited their ability to interview for a job, according to a document filed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as part of the rule change.

"Try to get a job without any teeth in your mouth," Sanders proposed. "Good luck, because you're not going to get it."

Delayed dental care doesn't just impact appearance and job prospects, it's also linked to an array of medical problems. Nearly half of U.S. adults have periodontal disease and more than 40% of children have developed tooth decay by Kindergarten.

Poor oral health is also associated with risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, dementia and adverse birth outcomes, research shows.

Lisa Simon worked as a dentist in a community health center where the waiting period for an appointment often exceeded four months. She said she routinely had to extract teeth that she could have saved if Medicaid funding had been sufficient to get patients timely appointments.

Now an internal medicine doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Simon sees more adult patients who have never been to a dentist, including people hospitalized with life-threatening sepsis that resulted from an untended dental infection. Other patients who couldn't afford to remove infected teeth and had to delay chemotherapy. Doctors often recommend patients get dental infections treated before starting chemotherapy.

"Both my medical and dental patients asked me the same question: Why is it so hard for me to get dental care?" Simon said. "There is no good reason."

Dental infection turns fatal

Dentists say the costs of operating a practice, including hiring support staff and hygienists, make it difficult financially for them to take a large number of Medicaid patients. Young dentists often must repay student loans that typically carry higher balances than what medical students owe. The low reimbursement rates from Medicaid make it difficult for some practices to make ends meet.

These issues are especially acute in rural communities that face dental provider shortages. Young dentists who must repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans may be reluctant to practice in rural communities with higher rates of uninsured patients. Two-thirds of rural communities nationwide are designated as having a shortage of dental professional, Sanders said.

Dr. Gordon Roswell Isbell III, who runs a dental practice with his son in Gadsden, Alabama, said the economic and workforce challenges for independent dentists are daunting. His practice employs six dental hygienists who are all near retirement age.

Insurance payments have decreased as business costs have risen, Isbell said, which makes it hard to keep the business afloat.

Dentists who are just getting out of school have a long way to go, said Brian Jeffrey Swann, a private and public health oral physician who lives in Greenback, Tennessee, and also practices in North Carolina and Massachusetts. "It's going to take them five to seven years before they start breaking even," he said.

Swann serves on the board of Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit that provides care at pop-up dental, vision and medical clinics around the U.S. at no cost to patients. People flock to these clinics, often driving across state lines to access care from dentists, hygienists and other volunteer health care workers. Some arrive days in advance of the clinics, sleeping in cars and wrapped in blankets, just to get a chance at free dental or other health care, Swann said.

Swann recounted the case of a 27-year-old Appalachian woman who had a range of health problems and developed swelling under her chin because of an infected, decaying molar. She went to a hospital emergency room where she was given antibiotics and pain pills and instructed to seek dental care.

She visited a dentist who told her it would cost $900 to remove the infected molar. She didn't have the cash, and decided to wait for a refund check before she saw a dentist to extract the tooth.

But her condition worsened over the ensuing months. She had trouble swallowing. Her neck turned black. She ended up at a university hospital where she received IV antibiotics and had her infected tooth extracted. She died two days later. The cause of death: sepsis from an infected tooth.

Swann said the hospital doctors who initially cared for the woman had received no training in oral health. The woman's mother and husband lamented the fact that nobody warned them about the seriousness of her condition.

The mother told Swann, "If they had only told us that a tooth infection could kill my daughter."

Have you had trouble accessing dental care due to cost or lack of health insurance? Please share your story with consumer health reporter Ken Alltucker, [email protected]

Hospital Cost Gaps Puzzle Employers Armed With New Rate Data (1)

By Sara Hansard

Health plans obligated to pay reasonable costs for workers’ care are grappling with wide price ranges in newly disclosed hospital data, which shows some employers pay thousands of dollars more for the same services in the same facility.

For instance, employer plans with at least 10,000 members paid prices varying from more than $5,500 to less than $1,000 for a common gastrointestinal procedure at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., according to March 2024 data compiled for Bloomberg Law by Turquoise Health, a price transparency platform that works with health-care industry stakeholders and consumers.

Palm Beach Gardens was charging employer plans the second highest rates in the US compared to Medicare, according to an analysis by RAND Corp. The facility charged employer plans on average 551% of Medicare rates across all services between 2020 and 2022, a recent RAND study said .

Companies that sponsor employee health plans are increasingly expected to pay attention to the prices they pay for health-care services as part of their fiduciary duty to provide good care at reasonable rates. Now that regulations have made negotiated rates publicly available, employers are just beginning to sort through reams of the confusing-to-parse pricing data in hopes it will help lower costs and avoid liability.

A recent lawsuit by an employee against Johnson & Johnson Inc. for allegedly paying inflated prices to pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Inc. highlights employers’ litigation risks now that negotiated rates are public.

The data is available under federal regulations requiring both hospitals and health insurance plans to post negotiated prices for their services that went into effect within the last three years.

Having access to pricing data “raises awareness that the variation in prices among hospitals and even within a single hospital for different plans is large,” said Brian Briscombe, senior health-care cost analyst and principal investigator of the RAND study. “It simply means that purchasers can become better informed shoppers and negotiators.”

The amount of potential savings could be significant, especially for large employers, who spent $486 billion on hospital bills in 2022, according to the RAND report.

No Correlation to Quality

“I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason for the discrepancy in prices,” said Gloria Sachdev, president and CEO of the Employers’ Forum of Indiana, which collaborated with RAND on the hospital pricing report.

“It has no correlation of quality,” Sachdev said. “Market concentration is the only correlating factor to explain the difference in provider prices.” The RAND report said that a large part of price variation is due to hospital market power.

The data analysis by Turquoise focused on esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs), common procedures done to examine the upper gastrointestinal tract that appear on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ list of 500 shoppable services for which health insurers and plans must publicly post negotiated prices.

Turquoise compiled machine-readable files as well as Form 5500 employer data filed with the US Labor Department to analyze price gaps for EGDs at the hospitals RAND said charged the highest prices in the country for inpatient and outpatient services as compared to Medicare rates according to its study. The conclusions of this story don’t reflect the official position of Turquoise.

Among the large employer plans at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, the highest rate paid for EGDs was $5,532 for plans administered by UnitedHealthcare , according to the data compiled by Turquoise. This included plans used by Apple Inc., Duke Energy Corp. , and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC , the data showed.

The data show that the company plans contract for these rates at the hospitals, but it doesn’t show what actual utilization is among plan participants.

The lowest rate paid for EGDs at Palm Beach Gardens was $997 for plans administered by Aetna . Employers using the plan with these rates include Abercrombie & Fitch Co. , Amazon.com Inc. , Campbell Soup Co. , Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. , and Exxon Mobil Corp.

Other companies had plans administered by both UnitedHealthcare and Aetna covered at both rates at Palm Beach Gardens. The Florida hospital didn’t respond to a request for comment.

RAND’s ranking of hospitals by cost includes facilities where it obtained enough data to compare their actual commercial inpatient and outpatient prices to what Medicare would have paid.

Aurora Medical Center in Kenosha, Wis., charged employer plans on average 602% of Medicare rates for the same services — the highest such price discrepancy in the country, according to RAND. The price for EGDs at the facility reached $3,555 for employers with plans administered by Anthem/BCBS , including those covering workers at 3M Co. , Home Depot USA Inc. , and Kraft Heinz Foods Co.

The lowest price for EGDs at Aurora was $2,852 for employers with plans administered by UnitedHealthcare for American Express Co. , Walgreen Co. , and UnitedHealth Group Inc., the parent company of UnitedHealthcare.

When reached for comment, Aurora referred Bloomberg Law to the American Hospital Association’s statement about the RAND report.

AHA group vice president for policy Molly Smith said in a statement May 13 that “hospitals are chronically underpaid for Medicare services,” and the RAND report “offers a skewed and incomplete picture” because its data set represents less than 2% of overall hospital spending nationally.

“Contracted prices for a specific service vary due to several factors, including geography and volume, and can vary from contract to contract,” Alex Kepnes, executive director of communications for Aetna Health Care Benefits, said in an email.

“Negotiating fair reimbursement rates is directly connected to our ability to keep member costs low and maintain access to quality care,” he said. “We focus on avoiding unsupportable increases in reimbursement rates that would raise costs for members and plan sponsors.”

“Information from databases focused solely on hospital list prices are not useful to consumers as they do not reflect member cost-sharing, benefit design, or contracted rates for entire episodes of care,” UnitedHealthcare said in an emailed statement.

“Providers often use commercial rates to subsidize lower Medicare fee-for-service and Medicaid rates,” the statement said. “Further, some providers may leverage their market position to charge egregious commercial rates.”

Aggregate Rates

The rates for one specific service exemplifies wide pricing disparities in commercial rates at hospitals, but benefits leaders may focus more on aggregate rates, said Shay Forbes, the head of employer solutions at Turquoise Health.

“A lot of times a benefits leader isn’t going to key in on one specific rate at one specific hospital unless there’s a lot of utilization going to it,” Forbes said. “If Home Depot is using Aurora a lot, they’re going to care about that rate.”

Home Depot didn’t respond to a request for comment on the data.

Employers “are willing to see things in the aggregate,” Shay said, and look to plan performance within a particular market and spending on services and treatments that particularly affect their employees.

Rates employers pay are determined by prices that are negotiated between health insurers and hospitals, Marilyn Bartlett, a consultant with MJBartlett LLC, said. Some larger employers negotiate direct contracts with hospitals, but most prices are based on networks set up by health insurance administrators, she said.

Employers should review transparency-in-coverage data, hospital price data, and claims data to make sure all three numbers match, Bartlett said. If claims charged to employers are higher than hospital price transparency data, the health insurance administrator “is keeping the spread,” she said.

Data Demands

A lawsuit filed May 10 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas by industrial supplier W.W. Grainger Inc. against Aetna Life Insurance Co. alleged the insurer prevented W.W. Grainger’s self-funded health plans from obtaining data about transactions between Aetna and health-care providers. Aetna allegedly mismanaged the company’s health plans by approving false and excessive claims and pocketing money that should have gone to medical providers.

At some employers, chief financial officers are taking charge of health-care costs, said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chairman of health-care transparency advocate Patient Rights Advocate. The group operates a hospital price files finder that posts transparency data for about 6,000 hospitals in the US, and issued a report in December 2023 finding that prices vary by 10 times with the same hospitals.

Hospital price variations are often not based on the number of members, Fisher said. “It’s really whatever they can get away with while both the insurers and the hospitals have been hiding prices.”

Wide price variation is “harmful to those employers and patients that have that plan that have no idea what they’re charging,” she said.

Employees bear the brunt of paying high health-care prices, according to Christopher Whaley, associate professor of health service policy and practice at Brown University School of Public Health and principal author of the RAND report. “That excess spending is just taken directly out of their paychecks,” he said.

Employers need to become better engaged in health-care negotiations, Whaley said. “You look at a company like Home Depot. Just think how much scrutiny they give to every single point along their supply chain.”

If one of their suppliers tried to charge them several multiples higher than other suppliers, they’d “laugh you out of the room,” he said. “But somehow, when it comes to health care, that same type of business mindset just goes out the door.”

— With assistance from Umar Farooq .

To contact the reporter on this story: Sara Hansard in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebekah Mintzer at [email protected] ; Jay-Anne B. Casuga at [email protected]

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WHA Dissertation Prize

The World History Association awards the annual WHA Dissertation Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in world, global, or transnational history.

2023 Dissertation Prize Winners

Congratulations to our 2023 Dissertation Prize winner Mejgan Massoumi , Fellow & Lecturer at the Stanford Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Program for her dissertation entitled "The Sounds of Kabul: Radio and the Politics of Popular Culture in Modern Afghanistan, 1960-79."

As noted by the committee: This dissertation explores the history of Afghanistan as a major producer of music across Islamic Eurasia and throughout its own global diaspora. A project about global networks, it is based on research in many archives, including in Kabul, many of which the author visited against serious odds.  Massoumi explains that the radio was a global technology that revolutionized the relationship between everyday people (both men and women) and the world and that permitted Afghans to articulate their place in the world through global lenses like the cold war, decolonization, and student movements worldwide. Massomi makes multiple important contributions to research and analysis in world history, including the emerging field identified as the history of sound. This dissertation presents an important analysis of the relationships between multiple spatial scales in modern world history, showing how radio and sound history offer a way to understand a synthesis of global and local. Moreover, this dissertation makes an excellent case for the importance of popular culture in the shaping of global connections. Massoumi’s analysis of the populism of the Afghan pop star Ahmad Zahir, for example, is a significant contribution to understanding the relationships between pop culture, global cosmopolitanism, and local tradition. It shows the diffusion of popular culture through the diffusion of technology, demonstrating the rise of a local and regional culture that first assimilated and then disseminated secular world popular culture among a Muslim population that world history surveys seldom acknowledge.

The committee has determined two honorable mention winners for this year's prize:

Hayley Genevieve Brazier for her dissertation entitled “Seafloor Machina: Aging Technologies in the Depths of the Pacific Ocean.” As noted by the committee:  This dissertation, an innovative interdisciplinary project that combines research in history and marine science, is a unique and skillfully researched study of the history of the impacts of industrial technologies on the ocean seafloor from the 1890s onward, with a focus on oil and gas drilling, undersea telegraph cables, and cabled observatories. The work is an important contribution to the “blue humanities” and to science and technology studies as well as world history. Brazier makes an excellent case for how historical study can assist in elucidating the long-term environmental impacts of industrial technology by drawing attention to global environmental impacts of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century imperialism. Her work touches on animal studies, technology, and industrialization, revealing a dazzling range of undersea human activity. This methodologically capacious work includes oral interviews and scientific information as well as archival records, and it deftly links ocean and industrial history to twenty-first century global concerns.

Rob Konkel for his dissertation entitled "Building Blocs: Raw Materials and the Global Economy in the Age of Disequilibrium.” As noted by the committee: This lively and relevant dissertation is a globally resonant account of trade in tungsten and manganese, two strategic raw materials needed for steelmaking, which were concentrated in locations that were remote from sites of advanced steel production. Konkel focuses on the decades between the 1880s and the 1940s and on the economic warfare and actual warfare that top steel producers engaged in to obtain the materials in question.  The dissertation is well written, and the proposition that “raw materials are key drivers of global history” is a terrific one for the field to take up. The study is spatially acute, organized around its central proposition that heavy industry was intractably global even as locations of resources and production were relatively fixed and distant from one another. Konkel argues that “bloc thinking” in international affairs was an effort to sequester natural resource supply chains into self-contained units, and he is also well attuned to the implications of his work for contemporary concerns like the race for rare earths today.

Thank you to all of the scholars who submitted their work to this year's competition. Thank you to the 2023 Dissertation Prize Committee: Ruth Mostern (chair), Peter Adebayo, Andrew Barnes, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, John Voll, and Urmi Willoughby for all of the work you put into this process. You can read the committee's full report here . And congratulations again to this year's winners!

2024 Dissertation Prize Submissions

Submissions for this prize open on August 15, 2024.  The World History Association awards the annual WHA Dissertation Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in world, global, or transnational history—that is, one that examines any historical issue with global implications, including but not limited to the exchange and interchange of cultures, the comparison of two or more civilizations or cultures, or the study in a macrohistorical manner of a phenomenon that had a global impact. To be eligible for the 2024 prize, the dissertation must have been defended as part of Ph.D. or equivalent degree between the dates of 31 August 2022 and 21 August 2024.  Eligible candidates are allowed to submit once, not multiple years.  Deadline date for submissions is October 1, 2024.

The 2024 prize, which consists of a $500 award, a certificate, and a one-year membership to the WHA , will be formally awarded at the  WHA ’s 2025 conference if the awardee is in attendance.

Submissions should include a cover letter or contact information sheet, abstract, and a  PDF file of the full dissertation. All dissertation submissions must be in the English language.  The cover or sheet should include the following: name, professional or home address, email, telephone and name of PhD granting institution. 

Click here to apply for the WHA Dissertation Prize.

Entries must be submitted by  1 October 2024 . Late entries and submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will be disqualified.

The Dissertation Prize Committee will determine the winner of the prize. In the event that the committee considers that the quality of the entries does not warrant the awarding of any prize, it shall have the right to make no award.

Contact the  WHA  with any questions regarding the prize or its guidelines.

Past Winners

• Carl Kubler : “Barbarians on the Shore: Global Trade and Everyday Life on the South China Coast, 1780 - 1860"

Honorable mention

• Ellen Nye : “Empires of Obligation: Law, Money, and Debt between England and the Ottoman Empire, 1670 - 1720"
• Kristyl Obispado : “The Pacific Sailors: Global workers at and on the edge of the Spanish empire (1580s – 1640s)”

Honorable mentions

• Jake Richards : “Liberated Africans and Law in the South Atlantic, c. 1839 – 1871”
• Nicholas Roberts : “A Sea of Wealth: Sayyid Sa’id bin Sultan, His Omani Empire, and the Making of An Oceanic Marketplace”
• Erik Glowark : “The Christianization of Kyushu: A World-Historical Interpretation of the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549-1650”
• Kristen Alff : “The Business of Property: Levantine Joint-stock Companies, Land, Law, and Capitalist Development Around the Mediterranean, 1850-1925”
• Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky : “Imperial Refuge: Resettlement of Muslims from Russia in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914”
• Sara Silverstein : “Doctors as Diplomats: The Origins of Universal Healthcare in International Society”
• Barry McCarron : “The Global Irish and Chinese: Migration, Exclusion, and Foreign Relations among Empires, 1784–1904”
• Kathryn Hain : “The Slave Trade of European Women to the Middle East and Asia from Antiquity to the Ninth Century”
• Isaiah Wilner : “Raven Cried for Me: Narratives of Transformation on the Northwest Coast of America”
• Patrick Kelly : “Sovereignty and Salvation: Transnational Human Rights Activism in the Americas in the Long 1970s”
• Phillip Guingona : “Crafted Links and Accidental Connections of Empire: A History of Early Twentieth-Century Sino-Philippine Interaction
• Bryce Beemer : “The Creole City in Southeast Asia: Slave Gathering Warfare and Culture Exchange in Burma, Thailand, and Manipur, 1752–1885”

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Drone Downed in Russia’s Moscow Region, Governor Says

(Reuters) - Russian air defence units downed a drone outside Moscow on Monday, Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Vorobyov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said fragments from the downed drone landed on a private house at about 9 p.m. (1800 GMT) in Balashikha, just east of the capital. Those inside the house escaped unhurt.

The Russian Defence Ministry reported that air defence units had destroyed a "small-scale airborne object".

Tass news agency, quoting aviation services, said aircraft had been temporarily directed away from flight paths northeast of Moscow but airports in the Moscow region were later reported to be operating normally.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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