Tag: Public Health Law Research

Variability of US State Workplace Wellness Program Laws

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A team of researchers led by Jennifer Pomeranz, JD, MPH, Clinical Assistant Professor of the College of Global Public Health at New York University, have released a new set of resources that detail characteristics of laws related to workplace wellness programs and identify trends in these laws across the United States: interactive maps for public and private employers at LawAtlas.org and a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Workplace Wellness Program Laws in US

A few key findings:

  • Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have laws related to workplace wellness programs.
  • Four states (Georgia, Indiana, Maine and Massachusetts) provide tax incentives for work place wellness programs.
  • State laws addressed public and private employers differently, for example, five states permit rewards (e.g., discounts, rebates and waivers) by public employers, whereas 16 states expressly permit positive rewards for participation in programs by private employers.

The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Public Health Law Research Program.

Happy New Year: From “Weltschmerz” to Pharmaceutical Innovation

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By Timo Minssen

Dear readers and colleagues,

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful year 2016.

Reaching the end of 2015, I cannot stop thinking about the year that has passed. Being a native German, living in Sweden and commuting every week over the bridge to Copenhagen in Denmark – most recently with thousands of terrified refugees and border controls on the way back to Sweden – this year has left me with much astonishment and concern about the state of the European Union and our global situation. It appears to me as if the EU and other global leaders have focused far too much on tiny technicalities, while leaving the bigger issues untouched and disregarding crucial lessons of history. There are so many things that we must learn from 2015’s terrible events and alarming decisions, but also from the hope-giving agreements, incidents and initiatives. For me one of the most important take-aways is that everything is connected and that sustainable, realistic solutions not only require immediate actions. In my view, we need to think about long-term strategies both in more detail and from a bigger perspective. Due to the complexity of our most pressing problems this is a colossal task. It demands more knowledge, better communications, more collaboration and a more effective coordination of  the considerable skills and different competences that are already out there.

Returning to the actual topic of this blog, it becomes evident that this is also very much true for the health sector and the bio-pharmaceutical area. Not only the Ebola outbreak, global health crises, IPR debates, dreadful business models and controversial FTA negotiations, but also scientific break troughs, new therapies, legislative action and novel US and EU approaches demonstrate very clearly how this area is left with many challenges and opportunities. The recently approved US 21st Century Cures Act and the new EU Clinical Trials Regulation, for example, show how legislative activities pursuing laudable goals might lead to unwanted adverse effects if they are not carefully enough considered. Read More

Changing How We Think (and Talk) About Public Health Law

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By Scott Burris, JD

Marice Ashe, Donna Levin, Matthew Penn, Michelle Larkin and I have a new piece in the Annual Review of Public Health (also available on SSRN). We set out a “transdisciplinary model of public health law” that encompasses within the core of the field both the traditional public health law practice of lawyers and what we call “legal epidemiology” — all the important public health law functions (from policy design to evaluation) that are typically carried out by people without legal training. I hope you will take a look.

Why this article and a transdisciplinary model? The idea comes out of the experience that the authors have all had trying to promote public health law practice and research. We realized that in spite of the success of the field and its importance to public health, a lot of non-lawyers in public health training, practice and research were uncomfortable with law — even when their work had to do with enforcing it or evaluating its impact.

We realized that we as lawyers were making things worse, by adhering to a traditional view of public health law as purely a practice of lawyers. We found that acknowledging the work of non-lawyers in public health law, conceptualizing key public health law activities in scientific terms, and even borrowing some scientific practices for legal work, were effective ways to change attitudes and improve our impact. Many of us have articles in the pipeline on legal epidemiology, policy surveillance and “the five essential public health law services” that will show the model in action.

I don’t have to tell readers of this blog that public health law is a great field. I hope the concept of transdisciplinary model will help make it a truly integral part of public health.

Read the full article here.

Job Opportunity: Legal Research Associate

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Come join our team!

The Public Health Law Research program is hiring legal research associates to work on our policy surveillance project. The legal research associate will conduct legal research using Lexis and Westlaw, build historical law using HeinOnline, and conceptualize legal domains for empirical research. The associate will also code law for the creation of quantitative legal datasets at LawAtlas.org, and write legal briefs and other materials for LawAtlas.org.

Learn more and apply today!

Second Amendment Rights and Mental Illness

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Editor’s Note: An updated of this post was published on March 6, 2017, entitled “The Balancing Act Between Mental Illness and Gun Rights.”

By Mariam Ahmed, JD/MSPP (2016)

In recent years, there have been a multitude of state- and federal-level discussions about how to use law to minimize gun violence as active shooter events increase. During these deliberations, one point that has repeatedly been debated is whether people with mental illness should have their gun possession rights limited.

Here’s how the legal landscape currently looks.

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Marriage Equality, Health, and Life Extension

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By John A. Robertson

Health care analysts have long studied the effects of relationships on health, e.g., married men live longer than unmarried.   Professor Debra Umberson, a sociologist at the University of Texas Sociology Department has researched deeply into these issues.  She opened my eyes recently with insights as to how denial of marriage equality is a public health hazard because of the beneficial effects of marriage on health and life extension.

Here is a link to her Huff Post essay on this topic and a word version of the same:

https://sites.la.utexas.edu/mharp/2015/06/09/one-benefit-to-same-sex-marriage-that-nobody-is-talking-about/

 In Sickness As In Health

As the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether the Constitution requires recognition of same-sex marriage, many have speculated about the real-world consequences of marriage equality.  On at least one front the answer is clear.  Extending marriage rights to same-sex couples will improve the nation’s health. Read More

A needle in a haystack – finding the elusive solution to Indiana’s HIV Outbreak

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By Nicolas Wilhelm, JD

Scott County, Indiana, which only has a few thousand residents, has historically had an average of five HIV cases per year. Since December 2014, however, the county has seen an outbreak, with more than 140 newly diagnosed cases. Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the director of the National Center for HIV/AIDs, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls this “one of the worst documented outbreaks of HIV among IV users in the past two decades.” Dr. Joan Duwve, the chief medical consultant with the Indiana State Department of Health, explained that the abuse of the prescription drug Opana was one of the catalysts for the increase in HIV cases, with some residents injecting it as frequently as 10 times a day, and sharing syringes with other members of their community.

HIV is mainly spread either by sexual contact with another person with HIV, or by sharing needles or syringes with someone who has HIV. One way to reduce the spread of the disease is to implement syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that reduce the transmission of blood-borne pathogens like HIV by providing free sterile syringes and collecting used syringes from injection-drug users (IDUs).

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Building on 20 Years of Success: The Future Role of Law

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By Scott Burris, JD

On this, the last day of National Public Health Week 2015, we’re looking forward by looking backward. There is nothing new about using law and policy to promote healthier environments, products and behavior. There is no good future for public health that does not include even more, and more effective, legal interventions.

Evan Anderson and I wrote in 2012 about the legal regulation of health-related behavior over the past half-century. The story we told offered several reasons for unabashed optimism about what law can do for health. The record is clear that law works, and works across a wide range of different health threats. We pointed to CDC lists of Great Public Health Achievements from the last century and the first decade of the 21st.   Every one of them — from high levels of vaccination, through motor vehicle safety and cancer prevention to maternal and child health – could not have been successful without law and policy. Read More

Making Connections & Collaborating for the Future of Public Health

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As part of the Public Health Law Research program’s participation in National Public Health Week 2015, we have been sharing materials and resources under the daily themes. Today’s theme, Building Broader Connections, is about expanding partnerships and making connections to benefit public health.

We spoke with Laura Hitchcock, JD, Policy Research & Development Specialist for Public Health – Seattle & King County and the King County Executive/Department of Executive Services Partnerships Initiative Lead. We asked her to offer some insight from her work as a lawyer and researcher in a public health department.

PHLR: What role can researchers play in building partnerships with health departments and contributing to the policy-making discussion?

Laura Hitchcock, JD
Laura Hitchcock, JD

LH: Public health researchers can help to support development and refinement of evidence-based policies. Because policies are created in a political process, it is important for public health departments to continue to offer their scientific knowledge to support creation of effective policies, including repeal of ineffective policies or refinement of existing policies to better result in a healthy population by 2030. Health departments may need help to define local or state-focused areas for policy evaluation by working together with researchers, and should contribute to development of research agendas by identifying areas where policy makers, communities, medical professionals and others have concerns about the public’s health, and are likely to need support from researchers to know how to ‘plug in’ to research agenda development. Read More