Tag: legal epidemiology

Bird's eye view of a town with identical looking-houses lined up close together

Housing Law and Health Equity: No Bliss in Ignorance

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research 1 Comment

By Katie Moran-McCabe and Scott Burris

Florence Nightingale once said, “The connection between health and the dwellings of the population is one of the most important that exists” — a statement that is as true today as it was at the turn of the 20th century. A decent dwelling and diverse communities, where there is access to transportation, good schools, shops, parks, socioeconomic mixture, social capital and collective efficacy, and economic opportunity are all features necessary for both a high-level and equitable distribution of well-being.

The promise of healthy housing and communities, however, falls short in the United States. Much of the housing in the U.S. is expensive, unsafe, and inadequate in supply. Read More

Author Q&A: “Association between State Minimum Wages and Suicide Rates in the U.S.”

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Alex Gertner, BA
Alex Gertner,  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As the suicide rate increases across the United States, researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health approached the issue by considering the financial anxiety caused by low wages. Alex Gertner, Jason Rotter, and Paul Shafer used the LawAtlas minimum wage dataset to explore the associations between state minimum wages and suicide rates in the United States.

Their study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on March 21, 2019.

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research spoke with Mr. Gertner about their study.

 

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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

Maps Outlining State Fair Housing Laws, State Landlord-Tenant Laws, and City Nuisance Property Laws are Now Available on LawAtlas

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Three new datasets covering housing related laws were published today on LawAtlas.org, the Center for Public Health Research website dedicated to empirical legal datasets. The three datasets are:

Each dataset is publicly available. You can explore the data using the site’s mapping tool that allows you to explore the elements of the law across jurisdictions or download the data as an excel spreadsheet without any cost. Each dataset is accompanied by a codebook, a research protocol, and a summary report.

State Fair Housing Protections

The federal Fair Housing Act, passed as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibits discrimination in housing-related transactions for individuals who are members of a protected class — these include race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. Forty-nine states and D.C. have adopted their own fair housing laws to expand upon these federal protections, such as prohibiting discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or source of income. These laws regulate which protected classes are included, the types of discriminatory actions that are prohibited, and when discrimination is exempt under the law.

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Sentinel Policy Surveillance: A New Front in Legal Epidemiology?

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Paul Erwin, Associate Editor of the American Journal of Public Health, recently wrote about the establishment of a  Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance System for Policy Change Impact,  or what might be called “sentinel policy surveillance.” The network of twelve diverse health officers will be trying to identify and share instances of harmful impact from Trump administration policies.

Erwin is suitably circumspect about what such a network can do. It is, he writes, no replacement of research, and, indeed, may be reporting perceived or feared effects as often as real ones.  I found the idea intriguing to ruminate on, though.  What follows are some scattered thoughts about the concept. I hope readers will add theirs.  Mostly I am interested in how the practice fits with general policy surveillance and public health law research.  Read More

New Research: Legal Epidemiology in the Literature

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It’s a rainy day on the East Coast; what better way to get through the damp than four new legal epidemiology articles? Our colleagues have published papers examining vaccine policies, telehealth reimbursement policies, scope of practice laws for health care providers, and the field of legal epidemiology as a whole:

Legal Epidemiology: The Science of Law
T Ramanathan, R Hulkower, J Holbrook, M Penn – The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics

The Latest in Vaccine Policies: Selected Issues in School Vaccinations, Healthcare Worker Vaccinations, and Pharmacist Vaccination Authority Laws
L Barraza, C Schmit, A Hoss – The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics

Legal Mapping Analysis of State Telehealth Reimbursement Policies
KE Trout, S Rampa, FA Wilson, JP Stimpson – Telemedicine and e-Health

Expanding Access to Care: Scope of Practice Laws
K Hoke, S Hexem – The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics

Webinars: ASPPH Two-Part Series on PHLR

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CPHLR is joining forces with the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) for a free, two-part webinar series on public health law research and policy data evaluation.

Public Health Law Research Part I: Creating and Using Open-Source Policy Data for Public Health Evaluation Research
March 29 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Will introduce participants to the practice of Policy Surveillance and the various law and policy datasets available through LawAtlas and other open-source portals.
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Public Health Law Research Part II: Developing and Implementing a Policy Evaluation Using Open-Source Legal Data
April 12 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Will introduce participants to the theory, design and implementation of a policy evaluation using policy surveillance datasets.
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