Health law section strives to stay on the cutting edge.

The practice of health law is so varied and changing that it's hard to believe it can be represented by any one Florida Bar section. One thing is clear, however--health law is almost always on the cutting edge of what's going on in the larger world.

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Section Chair Laurie Levin can remember when she first started her career in health law--"more years ago than you should print in the newspaper" --following the case of Nancy Cruzan, who remained in a persistent vegetative state for seven years, while her case and appeals wended their way through the courts and fascinated the media.

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"At the time, this was breaking news, very cutting-edge stuff," Levin remembered. "It was a discussion about whether 'brain dead' really meant 'dead.' We've come a long way."

Lately, Levin says she sees a lot of health law's focus going toward disaster preparedness, understandable given the natural disasters that have hit home over the last several years. But it's more correct to say health law is all over the map, and the section is doing its best to match this ever-changing field with appropriate CLE opportunities.

"Health law is a marriage of many conditional specialties, and a health lawyer is many things to many different people," she said. "Years ago, health law meant medical malpractice defense, then for awhile it focused on bioethics. Now health law also deals with things like reimbursement, risk management--it's a very broad specialty, and the best evidence of that is in the certification review course."

It's also reflected in the recent creation of a new section committee on public health law, chaired by members Rodney Johnson and Walter Carfora, to support education, networking, and procuring articles for the Bar Journal on public health law topics. Those issues generally include protecting the public's health from infectious disease, chemical and nuclear agents, biological toxins, or just about anything else involving mass casualties. It also involves general wellness and provider-of-last resort health care services.

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