By Zoey Binder
The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was highly criticized this year for an alleged lack of enforcement and failure to protect workers from unsafe working conditions related to COVID-19.
Of particular concern has been its failure to exert authority over the meatpacking industry, whose workers have been disproportionately harmed by the pandemic.
By Jessica Amoroso and Sarah Winston
States across the U.S. are using preemption to stifle local authority aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, resulting in confusion and a fragmented response.
Historically, local governments have played an important role in providing direct and indirect services to their communities, as they have a heightened awareness of their needs compared to state governments. This has proven especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, as city and municipal initiatives often have been the initial access point for virus-related services.
But state preemption is increasingly being used as a legal tool to prevent cities and municipalities from legislating on issues of importance to public health.
By Caroline Hinnenkamp
Racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system are well documented –– people of color are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.
Diversion efforts –– so named for their approach, which is to divert individuals away from the court process and instead offer opportunities for rehabilitation –– risk perpetuating these same racially disparate trends. Particularly if diversion programs have eligibility constraints based on prior records, people of color are more likely to be denied entry, because they are arrested and convicted at a higher rate than their white counterparts.
Historically, prosecutors tended to justify these constraints as mechanisms used to gauge an applicant’s capacity for rehabilitation, with recidivism (the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend) reduction as the central goal of diversion. Diversion was an alternative offered to the lucky few deemed “eligible” or “deserving,” with the implication being that reoffenders have a criminal disposition that is not amenable to rehabilitation.
But programs that use these screening methods tend to overlook the underlying facts and circumstances that might have brought about the applicant’s priors, such as implicit bias in law enforcement or the over-policing of specific communities. Without additional safeguards, the seemingly neutral constraint of “priors” fails to account for relevant pre-existing conditions, and risks barring entry to applicants who might otherwise benefit from diversion.
By Cydney Murray
The ongoing, worsening environmental crisis is exacerbating negative pregnancy outcomes associated with climate change.
Exposure to air pollutants, such as smog (ozone) and PM2.5 (another type of air pollution), is linked to impaired fetal growth, increased likelihood of cancer, autism spectrum disorder, stillbirth, and low birth weight. These health consequences have the potential to impact children’s overall quality of life by affecting their brain development, and their susceptibility to disease.
Climate change is worsening this established association, particularly for those living in urban environments with high air pollutant exposure. This disproportionately affects women of color, since they are more likely to live in more highly polluted areas, and already suffer a higher risk of negative pregnancy outcomes.
Historically, federal and state governments have been primarily responsible for increasing and maintaining the supply of affordable housing. But as budgets decrease, the burden has fallen more and more to local governments. Inclusionary zoning policies, which seek to reverse the negative, exclusionary effects of conventional zoning, are one tool local governments can use to increase affordable housing stock.
Courtnee Melton-Fant, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Memphis School of Public Health, recently published research in Housing Policy Debate that explores the growing trend of preemption as it relates to these inclusionary zoning policies.
Dr. Melton-Fant’s research used policy surveillance data produced by the Center for Public Health Law Research with the National League of Cities to examine the relationship between state preemption of inclusionary zoning policies and health outcomes among different demographic groups — particularly among people of color.
We asked Dr. Melton-Fant a few questions about her work.
By Jessica Lam and Megan Bershefsky
Over the years, Florida, an early hotspot in the opioid epidemic, has implemented a series of legal and regulatory responses that have been met with both success and continued challenges.
Since 2016 — about 25 years into an opioid crisis that began in the 1990s — more than half of the country has passed laws to limit either the number of days or the amount of opioids that can be prescribed. Florida is on the leading edge of both the epidemic and efforts to use law to combat its effects, passing its first laws before many other states.
By Katherine Zuk
Since the start of the pandemic, jails and prisons have continuously struggled to stop the spread of COVID-19 cases.
The novel coronavirus has been ravaging the U.S. since late February, with over 6 million cases and 185,092 deaths. Emerging data shows alarmingly high rates of COVID-19 in jails and prisons nationwide, including over 85% of inmates testing positive at two facilities in Ohio. As of September 3, there have been at least 180,045 cases and 928 deaths in prisons alone – and many fear these numbers are severely underreported.
Philadelphia offers an unfortunate case study.
By Marissa Schwartz
Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD), sometimes referred to as Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), is a life-saving, evidence-based treatment method considered the gold standard for addressing opioid use disorders. Unfortunately, however, there are a number of barriers — both legal and cultural — that prevent some patients from accessing the treatment they need.
MOUD combines the use of prescription medications (like buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone) with counseling and behavioral therapies to provide comprehensive treatment in an inpatient or outpatient setting.
Due to stigma toward MOUD from patients and providers, as well as an overall lack of providers certified to dispense MOUD, there are currently more prescribing rules in the U.S. for the drugs used in MOUD, like buprenorphine, than for opioids. Major legal barriers include provider limits on the number of patients to whom they can offer MOUD, restrictions on which facilities can provide in-patient MOUD treatment, and insurance pre-authorization requirements.
By Erin Napoleon
In 2017, more than 47,000 people had died of an opioid overdose, and 2 million people were dependent on opioids. This astonishing number is attributable in part to the lack of federal and state legislation to curb the over-prescription of opioids.
Opioids first entered the US market in the late 1990s. Pharmaceutical companies’ assured physicians that opioids were less addictive than morphine and posed less dangerous side effects, and doctors began prescribing the pills at unprecedented rates.
Understanding how the dearth of federal and state legislation, coupled with prescribing patterns based on race and socioeconomic status, influence the over-prescription of opioids can potentially lead to new and innovative ways of solving the opioid epidemic that continuously threatens the United States.
New data from the Center for Public Health Law Research captures the wide variety of mitigation policies from all 50 states and DC intended to prevent further spread and lessen the potential impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
This data currently includes orders and laws from 20 states from January 20, 2020 through April 30, 2020. Laws and orders from the remaining 30 states and DC will be added in the coming weeks.
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