Tag: Datasets

Heatmap of the the U.S. from the Opportunity Atlas website

Opportunity Atlas Creates Opportunities for Legal Epidemiology

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By Amy Cook

Public health experts know that the social determinants of health—the environments in which we live, work, learn, and play—all have important effects on our health and well-being. As further evidence of this, in October 2018, researchers from Opportunity Insights collaborated with the Census Bureau to unveil the Opportunity Atlas, an interactive tool tracking data from more than 20 million Americans from childhood through their mid-30s, across each of the country’s 70,000 census tracts. The Opportunity Atlas gives us crucial insight into the level of geography that can impact adult outcomes: beyond the state and city, the neighborhood matters, sometimes tremendously. Read More

Breaking the Mold: Law and Mold Remediation after a Natural Disaster

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By Nicolas Wilhelm, JD

We’re in the midst of the hurricane season here on the East Coast, and with hurricanes come a host of health-related concerns from emergency preparedness to the clean-up after a disaster.

One of the issues rarely discussed in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy —two of the costliest natural disasters in US history — is the mold growth that occurred in water-damaged homes. One study indicated that the concentration of mold in flooded areas after Hurricane Katrina was roughly double the concentration in non-flooded areas.

With natural disasters occurring with greater frequency in recent years (there were three times as many natural disasters occurring from 2000 through 2009 than from 1980 to 1989), law may play a role in keeping Americans safe.

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Health in All Policies: Unfunded mandate?

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By Joshua Waimberg, JD

Beginning in the early 2000s, there was a push in the public health world for jurisdictions and localities in the United States to adopt a Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach similar to recent initiatives in Europe. At its core, HiAP is a collaborative approach to improve the public’s health by incorporating health into decision-making across sectors and policy areas.

According to the Public Health Institute, HiAP is centered around five core elements: promoting health and equity, supporting intersectoral collaboration, creating co-benefits for multiple partners, engaging stakeholders, and creating structural or process change. It can be adopted at all levels of government, and jurisdictions that adopt HiAP approaches do so to ensure that all decision-makers and stakeholders work together to improve the health of their communities.

The Policy Surveillance Program, with support from the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, has just published that detail state-level HiAP bills and laws that were proposed or passed between the start of 2012 and the end of 2016. Read More

Biosimilars – In The Pipeline or Still a Pipe Dream?

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By Jonathan Larsen, JD, MPP and Adrienne R. Ghorashi, Esq.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first biosimilar for use in the United States in March 2015. The approval came after several years of regulatory process development authorized by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation (BPCI) Act of 2009, a component of the Affordable Care Act.

Biosimilars are highly similar, but not identical, copies of FDA-approved biologics, known as “reference” products. Biologics are used to treat a variety of diseases and medical conditions, including cancer. For many years, biosimilar development was thought to be too complex and too costly to advance, and exclusivity patents for reference biologics prohibited developers from marketing competing biosimilars. Now that those patents have started to expire, biosimilar development can finally begin, at a potentially huge benefit to patients.

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Tracking Oil and Gas Laws

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For three and half years, the Intermountain Oil & Gas BMP Project has been working on a collection of datasets and maps at LawAtlas.org that focus on water quality, water quantity, and air quality statutes and regulations within oil and gas development in the United States, specifically related to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking).

Most recently this collection of seven datasets expanded from 13 states (CO, LA, MT, ND, NM, NY, OH, OK, PA, TX, UT, WV, and WY) to 17 states (adding IL, CA, AR, and AK) and added regulations from four federal agencies – Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The research, which was funded in part by the Public Health Law Research program (PHLR), is meant to shed light on the regulations in place in the industry, and establish a baseline for how the industry is regulated.

Samelson head shot
Matt Samelson, JD

Matt Samelson, JD, a consultant attorney at University of Colorado Boulder Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment, spoke with PHLR about his work and the recent developments in this project.

PHLR: What is the mission of the Intermountain Oil and Gas BMP Project? Read More