Provisions of State Laws Governing Local Health Departments

Greve, Clifford H.

doi:10.2307/4588360

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The impulse to track the law in a complex federal system is an old one (37,55). A recent Internet scan turned up hundreds of web pages reporting current 50-state assessments of health law (66).…”

Section: “Legal Epidemiology”mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology

Burris

Ashe

Levin

et al. 2016

Annu. Rev. Public Health

120

153

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Public health law has roots in both law and science. For more than a century, lawyers have helped develop and implement health laws; over the past 50 years, scientific evaluation of the health effects of laws and legal practices has achieved high levels of rigor and influence. We describe an emerging model of public health law that unites these two traditions. This transdisciplinary model adds scientific practices to the lawyerly functions of normative and doctrinal research, counseling, and representation. These practices include policy surveillance and empirical public health law research on the efficacy of legal interventions and the impact of laws and legal practices on health and health system operation. A transdisciplinary model of public health law, melding its legal and scientific facets, can help break down enduring cultural, disciplinary, and resource barriers that have prevented the full recognition and optimal role of law in public health.

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Section: “Legal Epidemiology”mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology

Burris

Ashe

Levin

et al. 2016

Annu. Rev. Public Health

120

153

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Such legal mapping studies assessing state and local health laws go back at least seventy-five years in the health literature (Fowler 1941), and have become common in the past thirty years, covering a wide range of topics. Studies of "infrastructural health law" (defining the basic powers, duties, and limitations of health agencies at the state and local level) have appeared regularly (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 1994;Enterline et al 1984;Fowler 1941;Gostin et al 1996, Greve 1953Hein and Bauer 1964;Moldenhauer and Greve 1953). Even more common have been assessments capturing the nature of and variation in laws 5 directly addressing specific health problems, including such important interventions as access to contraceptives (Merz, Jackson, and Klerman 1995;Warren 1964), smoking and tobacco control (Choi, Novotny, and Thimis 1992;Shelton et al 1995), syringe exchange (Burris et al 1996;Burris et al 2002), tuberculosis control (Gostin 1993), and expedited partner therapy for sexually transmitted infections (Hodge et al 2008).…”

Section: The Emergence Of Policy Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Surveillance: A Vital Public Health Practice Comes of Age: Table 1

Burris¹,

Hitchcock²,

Ibrahim³

et al. 2016

Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law

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Governments use statutes, regulations, and policies, often in innovative ways, to promote health and safety. Organizations outside government, from private schools to major corporations, create rules on matters as diverse as tobacco use and paid sick leave. Very little of this activity is systematically tracked. Even as the rest of the health system is working to build, share, and use a wide range of health and social data, legal information largely remains trapped in text files and pdfs, excluded from the universe of usable data. This article makes the case for the practice of policy surveillance to help end the anomalous treatment of law in public health research and practice. Policy surveillance is the systematic, scientific collection and analysis of laws of public health significance. It meets several important needs. Scientific collection and coding of important laws and policies creates data suitable for use in rigorous evaluation studies. Policy surveillance addresses the chronic lack of readily accessible, nonpartisan information about status and trends in health legislation and policy. It provides the opportunity to build policy capacity in the public health workforce. We trace its emergence over the past fifty years, show its value, and identify major challenges ahead.

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“…16 The emergence of policy surveillance as a distinct practice has been gradual. Although there is a long tradition of "50 state surveys" in public health, [25][26][27] the use of scientific methods to create datasets of legal variables suitable for use in evaluation research has emerged in the last twenty years as a result of sustained research funding for legal evaluation in key areas, most notably alcohol and tobacco control. In contrast to "traditional" legal research, policy surveillance entails tracking policies over time, and the use of systematic quantitative or qualitative coding to create scientific datasets.…”

Section: Policy Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%