According to new research, the link between poverty and mortality is just as strong today as it was in the Victorian age as many people die because they lack the resources to get proper healthcare.
Author and professor Dr. Lawrence Gostin, associate dean and professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University’s Law Center and author of “Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint,” will discuss this gap in his talk, “Redressing the Unconscionable Health Gap Between the Rich and Poor: A Proposal for a Global Plan for Justice” at 5 p.m. Wednesday in Ford Auditorium in U-M Hospital.
This is the 14th annual Raymond Waggoner Lecture on Ethics and Values in Medicine, sponsored by the Medical School Department of Psychiatry. It is free and open to the public. Gostin will focus on the inequality, health wise, between the rich and the poor, and what to do in order to fix this growing problem.
The Waggoner lectureship is named for the late Dr. Waggoner, who died in June 2000 at age 98. He was chair of the Department of Psychiatry for 33 years, from 1937-70, and a dedicated leader of the American Psychiatric Association APA (president, 1969-70; Distinguished Service Award, 1988).
Waggoner was a noted psychiatrist, medical administrator and government advisor who was one of the first to see mental illness as both an emotional and physical problem.
Gostin has led major law reform initiatives in the United States and abroad, including the drafting of the Model Emergency Health Powers Act to combat bioterrorism, and the “Turning Point” Model State Public Health Act.
Gostin is a Health Law and Ethics editor, contributing writer and columnist for the Journal of the American Medical Association. He has authored several books and articles on public health and ethical treatments of patients.
