Public Health Law

In an event of an exposure to our government or state, public health steps in to facilitate control of the situation, as well as protect the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. Public health law includes guidance from the government and state, whether one preempts the other is still unclear depending on the situation at hand. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The World Health Organization (WHO) play a big part in analyzing bioterrorism, when our government is attacked with such destructive agent. “Public health law is defined as the study of legal powers and duties of the state to promote the conditions for people to be healthy and the limitation on the power of the state to constrain the autonomy, privacy, liberty, or proprietary or other legally protected interests of individuals for the protection or promotion of community health (Goston, 2005)”.
Public health trumps over all other explanations, including individual rights. Not to say individual rights should not be honored, but when public health is at stake, state right’s takes on priority. State rights can impede on an individual’s right to autonomy, privacy, freedom, equality, and discrimination, but that doesn’t mean individual rights are not important. Public health is not only in place to protect the public, but to carry out the rights
We now offer immunizations to prevent exposure to life-threatening diseases, that once plagued our communities. Preventive services are also offered to allow physicians to capture abnormalities in their patients thus protecting the community, results are then sent to the appropriate agency for further investigation. Providers are to “promptly detect and report persons who have contracted, protect close contacts of patients with contagious diseases (Taylor, Nolan & Blumberg, 2005)”, from further spread of the infectious