The issue of apology and disclosure of medical errors in the context of the physician- patient relationship has attracted increasing attention in recent years. On the other hand, it has received little attention in the context of public health activities, thus missing the collective healing potential of apologizing and providing information to the public.
The purpose of this paper is to enrich the discussion regarding apologies and disclosure errors in the context of public health. To fulfil this purpose, the paper addresses the ringworm case, which is a well- known episode in the history of Israeli public health policy. More specifically, the paper focuses on a decision handed by the Israeli Supreme Court in the Eibi Case (2015), which recognized a duty to inform ringworm patients about the medical error involved in their treatment and its results. The paper seeks to examine whether this decision succeeded where other legal means failed, in the construction of a collective healing process. The paper concludes that although the Eibi Case provided the court an opportunity to contribute to the creation of a collective healing process of ringworms patients, the decision didn’t fully realize this potential.

Recent decades have witnessed the appearance of multiple grounds for vaccine hesitancy. One of the options to deal with this phenomenon is legislative. Given that vaccination enforcement through law raises allegations of infringement of constitutional rights, interventions seeking to promote vaccination compliance should rather address the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy, which are – by and large – related to trust in health authorities. Trust in health authorities may be promoted by a procedure for compensating the comparatively few vaccination victims reflecting a willingness to acknowledge liability and commitment to social justice.
A qualitative study of the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law was conducted by the author. The study involved document content analysis (legislative protocols, Court judgments) and semi-structured in-depth interviews with informants representing different legal, medical and ethical perspectives. The thematic analysis found that the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law and its implementation in Court do not attain their therapeutic potential with respect to the promotion of trust. Barriers to claim submissions and the denial of all claims submitted according to the law do not permit the acknowledgement of liability or the demonstration of the authorities’ commitment to social justice.
Recognizing the therapeutic power of the Law may lead to adaptations or amendments promoting trust in the health authorities and subsequently fostering vaccine compliance.

This paper examines the intersection between the two professions – law and medicine – with reference to systematic transformations that have characterized their development in the past century. In particular, the paper examines the co-emergence of the new public health and health promotion scholarship along with the development of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) movement in the second half of the 20th century. The two movements, with their later developments, have aspired to change the focus of professionals in the field, and both have been tremendously successful on the one hand, and on the other have remained marginal to mainstream training and identity building of contemporary lawyers and doctors.

This article reviews some of the key issues in transitional justice process and institutional design, based on my research and experience working and living in several post-conflict societies, and suggests that cultural and political variations in transitional justice design, practices, and processes are necessary to accomplish plural goals. The idea of process pluralism, derived from the more general fields of conflict resolution and ‘alternative dispute resolution’ in legal contexts, is an essential part of transitional justice, where multiple processes may occur simultaneously or in sequence over time (e.g. truth and reconciliation processes, with or without amnesty, prosecutions, lustration and/or more local legal and communitarian processes), depending on both individual and collective preferences and resources. Transitional justice is itself ‘in transition’ as iterative learning has developed from assessment of different processes in different contexts (post-military dictatorships, civil wars, and international and sub-national conflicts). This article draws on examples from Argentina’s and Chile’s emergence from post-military dictatorships to describe and analyze a plurality of processes, including more formal governmental processes, but also those formed by civil society groups at sub-national levels. This article suggests that ‘democracy development’ and legalistic ‘rule of law’ goals and institutional design may not necessarily be the only desiderata in transitional justice, where more than the ‘legal’ and ‘governmental’ is at stake for more peaceful human flourishing. To use an important concept from dispute resolution, the “forum must fit the fuss”, and there are many different kinds of ‘fusses’ to be dealt with in transitional justice, at different levels of society – more than legal and governmental but also social, cultural and reparative.

This article describes the theory and practice of narrative mediation as a primary resource in the engagement and resolution of communal cultural violence by military and development advisors operating in under-governed conflict zone. The praxis adopts the narrative therapy practice of Michael White and the narrative mediation model of Winslade & Monk to create an approach to engage rural, tribal communities caught in cycles of violence as perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Because the praxis is employed cross-culturally in sociocentric communities, I have added elements of conflict story discovery and joint mediation therapy to the existing model of deconstruction, externalization and restorying – thus creating a reformulated model. The employment of this narrative therapy and mediation approach was done through my practical field application during 20 years of violent, intra-state conflict in Sudan, Niger, Iraq and Colombia. The implications of continuing narrative mediation as a primary resource would serve to advance the larger praxis of conflict resolution in cultural and ethnic violence.

Background: Attempts to practice standard (Western) mediation in a traditional ethnic community – Jewish Bukharians in Ramla, Israel – failed owing to the incompatibility of this mediation with the community’s customs and norms. Purpose: To develop a hybrid model for conflict resolution in this community and traditional communities in general, following an extensive inquiry that examined the cultural characteristics of the Bukharian community in Ramla and the preferences of its members with regard to intervention in conflicts within the group. Methodology: Mixed methods research, combining questionnaires, a focus group and three interviews. Findings: The findings provided an in-depth understanding of the Bukharian community in Ramla, its cultural characteristics and their preference when dealing with conflicts. Largely, from the sample I studied it can be suggested that the Bukharians accept power distances as something natural, that they can tolerate ambiguous situations and tend to avoid direct confrontation and expression of emotions. Most of the informants have a clear preference to turn to respected members of the community when they seek assistance in handling conflicts. These findings allowed the construction of the hybrid mediation model composed of six stages: Intake, Framework Formation, Opening Statements, Emergence of Interests, Options Generation and Agreement. This model calls for co-mediation of a traditional indigenous dignitary with a professional mediator who together conduct a tailor-made mediation. Practical implications: This unique model is most suitable for the Jewish Bukharians, but can also be used by other groups worldwide that share the same cultural characteristics of the Bukharian Jews.

As a field, mediation has excellent training and education and excellent service delivery. But it has no career path from the completion of education to a case flow practice. There is no apprenticeship process, there is no way to gain experience with significant cases, there is no structure for serious supervision, there is no way to establish a reputation for professional competence. The result is the loss of many talented, particularly young, mediators. One major cause is a failure to attract cases valued at more than small claims level and less than, say, $100,000. The field needs to focus on this gap in its professional process.

Love and Stulberg critically discuss policy, scholarly, and practice developments in four areas of program development in the area historically referenced as alternative dispute resolution (ADR): the range of process options; the impact of court procedures on ADR program development and practice; the nature of ADR scholarship and training; and the general public's receptiveness to or rejection of the normative principles that structure ADR collaborative processes. Their concluding remarks suggest that the promise of ADR, particularly of the mediation process, remains inspiring to many, even if its effective implementation remains uneven.

Compared with other disciplines in the social sciences, conflict resolution is a relatively new, emerging professional and academic field. Many developments have shaped the current reality and boundaries of the field. This article is an attempt to provide a set of reflections on the major issues, challenges and possible future directions facing the field of conflict resolution. By narrating my own personal and professional journey, I hope to capture certain aspects and perspectives of this field. This is not a comprehensive review or ‘scientific’ charting of the field, nevertheless it attempts to shed light on areas and concepts that are otherwise taken for granted or neglected when the mapping of the field is done through more extensive empirical research. This mapping of conflict resolution after 30 years of practice, teaching and research first involves reflections on the conceptual or so-called theoretical groundings of the field. Second, it examines the various professional practices that have branched out through the last few decades. Third, it identifies some of the current limitations and challenges facing conflict resolution practitioners and scholars in their struggle to position the field in relation to current global realities. The final section discusses possible future directions to address existing gaps and refocus the research agenda of the field.