Disability Nondiscrimination: An Urgent Issue for Pandemic Justice

Plans such as Alabama's, which explicitly excluded disability-based categories such as severe or profound mental retardation, were challenged by disability rights groups as violating antidiscrimination law and were withdrawn.1 Left unstated in the bulletin issued by the Office for Civil Rights...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of public health (1971) 2020-10, Vol.110 (10), p.1458-1459
Main Author: Francis, Leslie P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Care
Betacoronavirus
Civil rights
Conflicts of interest
Coronavirus Infections
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Disability
Disability discrimination
Disabled Persons
Discrimination
Disease
Federal agencies
Geriatrics
Government
Health care access
Health Law
Health Policy
Humans
Intellectual disabilities
Medical prognosis
Mental health services
Metastasis
National plans
Neuromuscular diseases
Older people
Pandemics
People with disabilities
Pneumonia, Viral
Public health
SARS-CoV-2
Social Justice
Survival
Ventilators
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Summary:Plans such as Alabama's, which explicitly excluded disability-based categories such as severe or profound mental retardation, were challenged by disability rights groups as violating antidiscrimination law and were withdrawn.1 Left unstated in the bulletin issued by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the US Department of Health and Human Services at the time was whether triage could consider individualized assessments of survival prospects beyond the immediate episode of illness.2 A resolution agreement reached between OCR and the state of Tennessee in late June 2020 takes a far-reaching antidiscrimination stance. The resolution also may be stronger than the policy statement of the American Geriatrics Association that some degree of benefit to patients may be considered in the form of short-term survival up to six months.5 The resolution agreement applies to Tennessee; how further hospital or state plans may be evaluated by OCR will surely continue to unfold. Calling attention to the many aspects of disability discrimination in pandemic times, as Sabatello et al. do, reminds us that disability nondiscrimination has implications for social justice that reach far beyond a single group. >4jPI-l Leslie P. Francis, JD, PhD CONFLICTS OF INTEREST The author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
ISSN:0090-0036
1541-0048
DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2020.305880