Ethical Issues in New-born Screening and Public Health Law

This document discusses the ethical issues related to new-born screening and public health law. It explores the importance of parental consent, the need for education and awareness, and the role of the local government in promoting health and well-being. The document also addresses the impact of civil liberties on public health and presents different strategies to address childhood obesity.

Running head: HEALTHCARE
CHS 761.7001 Public Health Law
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HEALTHCARE
Discussion 2
Step 1: New-born screening forms a vital component of healthcare since they help in
early detection of metabolic and genetic disorders, pre-symptomatically, thus reducing future
health risks. However, major ethical issues are related to dissemination of insufficient
information to parents about the need for screening, lack of communication, and threat to
new-born health and safety under circumstances when the parents do not consent to the
process.
Step 2: While making new-born screening mandatory, the health department must
address the ethical issues by imparting education to parents on the need of screening their
children, and the adverse events that might occur if they are not screened (Benjamin &
Berkman, 2015). Parents often demonstrate lack of knowledge about possible health diseases
that can affect their children and their future impacts. Thus, increasing parental knowledge
and awareness is essential for involving them in decision making.
Step 3: Long-term care by the parents often gets improved if parents are allowed to
voice their opinion, while healthcare decisions are being made for their children. Owing to
the fact that not conducting new-born screening due to lack of parental consent can result in
failure in detection of potentially disabling or fatal health conditions, there is a need to
disseminate essential information to the parents about their role in the influencing health
outcomes of their children.
Discussion 4
Also referred to as personal freedom, civil liberties refer to personal freedom that
cannot be abridged by the government without due procedure, either by judicial interpretation
or by law. Owing to the fact that public healthcare is an issue based on civil rights, under
circumstances when a person suffers from a potentially infectious or deadly disease, it is

2HEALTHCARE
necessary to curtail the civil rights, in order to provide protection to the public (Gostin &
Wiley, 2016). However, public health agencies also demonstrate an ethical obligation for
addressing use of solitary confinement for health equity, violence prevention, surveillance,
and reducing risks of psychological and occupational hazards for correctional staff (Cloud et
al., 2015).
Discussion 5
Authorities of the local government are held democratically accountable for the
wellbeing of the local population. They comprehend the fundamental prominence of “place”
in upholding health and wellbeing. They also work towards improvement of social
determinants of health such as, environmental regeneration, housing, education, road and fire
safety, for eliminating health inequalities, thus improving health status of the residents
(Willmott et al., 2015). In addition, the local government also has the responsibility of
providing welfare services in the form of residential accommodation to people who are in
need such as, aged, or disabled people, thus improving their health. They also support local
communities, promote community engagement, and foster social networks amid isolated
elderly, children, and young families, all of which play an important role in health
enhancement (Sallnow & Paul, 2015).
Discussion 6
Public health problem selected- Childhood obesity
 Command and Control Regulation- This regulation can be imposed for removing the
sale of carbonated drinks and fried foods from schools, thus reducing their
consumption by children. While it helps in influencing behavior by defining what is
illegal and what is permitted, it might reflect severely on the food products (Cole &
Grossman, 2018).

3HEALTHCARE
 Public Disclosure Mandate- It can force grocery stores, movie theatres, game parlor,
vending machine, and restaurants to provide a detailed calorie count for all food that
are being sold to children. This will help in keeping a track on the calorie
consumption and will help in reducing access of children to high calorie food (Aranda
Balcazar, Darden & Rose, 2016). However, such a mandate will impose a restriction
on food choices and might even prevent them from consuming the essential nutrients.
 Choice Architecture- Since children have a tendency of buying junk food and
sweetened beverage, supermarkets can purposely place such food items at the end of
the store that would require them to travel farther, thus reducing their tendency of
buying those items. While it would reduce their tendency to intake food that increases
obesity, it would lead to unnecessary and unplanned purchase (Kraak et al., 2017).
 Negotiated Rulemaking- Representatives of the federal agencies and parents of
children can negotiate terms of administrative rule that emphasize the need of
conducting regular health screening for detecting childhood obesity in the target
population. While this negotiation will take into consideration the opinion and views
of parents regarding the health screening of their children, it might lead to conflict of
interest and prevent both the parties from reaching a common decision.
 Industry Self-Regulation- This self-regulation can be imposed on television in order
to ensure that advertisements portray children characters in a manner that only
promotes healthy food products. Owing to the fact that children develop affection for
their preferred character, and develop parasocial bond with them, this regulation will
act as an important part of commercial persuasion (Bogart, Castro & Cohen, 2019).
However, self-regulating efforts may well be unsuccessful, due to the
characteristic skirmish of interest in requesting any association to police itself.

4HEALTHCARE
 Deregulation- Deregulation refers to lowering the control or influence that
government organizations generally exert on private industry. Reducing control on
food industry will increase the consumption of fast food and result in an increase in
obesity prevalence among children. Presence of market liberal approaches will also
increase the average BMI, thus showing a negative correlation between stringent trade
limitations and obesity.
Discussion 8
The article selected highlights the trend of addressing obesity, which has been
recognized as an epidemic in the United States. It elucidates several policies and bill that
have been passed for mitigating the prevalence and impact of obesity, and focuses on the fact
that imposing taxes on food products that are rich in sugar or fat content. This can be cited as
a correct approach since an increase in levy would result reduce the tendency of the
population, to buy such food products, thus lowering the obesity rates. In addition, the bill
also aims to increase excise duty on video games and rental of DVD and video movies, thus
demonstrating effort to reduce the screen time that children spent. This will also help in
preventing childhood obesity since larger screen time has been associated with a sedentary
life that makes children obese (Robinson et al., 2017).

5HEALTHCARE
References
Aranda Balcazar, R., Darden, M., & Rose, D. (2016). Information, Choice, and Obesity:
Measuring the Impact of the New York City Calorie Labeling Mandate on
Obesity(No. 1611). Tulane University, Department of Economics.
Benjamin, E., & Berkman, J. D. (2015). Parental Consent for the Use of Residual
Newborn Screening Bloodspots Respecting Individual Liberty vs Ensuring Public
Health.
Bogart, L. M., Castro, G., & Cohen, D. A. (2019). A qualitative exploration of parents’,
youths’ and food establishment managers’ perceptions of beverage industry self-
regulation for obesity prevention. Public health nutrition, 22(5), 805-813.
Cloud, D. H., Drucker, E., Browne, A., & Parsons, J. (2015). Public health and solitary
confinement in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 105(1), 18-
26.
Cole, D. H., & Grossman, P. Z. (2018). When is command-and-control efficient?
Institutions, technology, and the comparative efficiency of alternative regulatory
regimes for environmental protection. In The Theory and Practice of Command
and Control in Environmental Policy (pp. 115-166). Routledge.
Gostin, L.O. & Wiley, L.F. (2016). Public health law: power, duty, restraint. Univ of
California Press.
Kraak, V. I., Englund, T., Misyak, S., & Serrano, E. L. (2017). A novel marketing mix
and choice architecture framework to nudge restaurant customers toward healthy
food environments to reduce obesity in the United States. Obesity reviews, 18(8),
852-868.

6HEALTHCARE
Robinson, T. N., Banda, J. A., Hale, L., Lu, A. S., Fleming-Milici, F., Calvert, S. L., &
Wartella, E. (2017). Screen media exposure and obesity in children and
adolescents. Pediatrics, 140(Supplement 2), S97-S101.
Sallnow, L., & Paul, S. (2015). Understanding community engagement in end-of-life
care: developing conceptual clarity. Critical Public Health, 25(2), 231-238.
Willmott, M., Womack, J., Hollingworth, W., & Campbell, R. (2015). Making the case
for investment in public health: experiences of Directors of Public Health in
English local government. Journal of Public Health, 38(2), 237-242.