“DHS should integrate health workers into their screening process”

Dr. Lisa Eckenwiler works on the relationship between place and health justice, with a particular emphasis on global health ethics, including disaster relief and humanitarian health care. Recently, her work has focussed increasingly on the health needs and vulnerabilities of refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers and the question of health justice for the chronically displaced.

So when Dr. Eckenwiler heard Dr. Alexander Eastman, the senior medical official at the Department of Homeland Security, comment that the DHS is “a law enforcement agency … not a humanitarian agency,” she saw an opening to argue for the importance of building health care directly into immigration and asylum procedures. 

You can read the case she makes in her op ed in The Hill: DHS should integrate health workers into their screening process

Dr. Lisa Eckenwiler is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Health Administration and Policy and Academic Director of the Global Health Fellows Program, a joint program of the Departments of Philosophy and Global Affairs.

April 09, 2019