Tag: policy surveillance

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

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

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.
REGISTER >>

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.
REGISTER >>

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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California the latest to pass a Death with Dignity law, 5th in US

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Medical personnel are trained to “first do no harm.” In end-of-life treatment, that simple directive can be difficult to interpret, and the legal landscape has evolved in the United States over the past 25 years. In 1990, the US Supreme Court ruled that physicians and other health care providers could withhold medical treatment at the direction of a patient or the patient’s directed agent.

Most recently, a movement to provide patients’ help in dying has been termed “death with dignity” and “assisted suicide.” Federal law does not currently address euthanasia or “mercy killings” in terminal patients who seek a physician’s aid to end their own suffering. Rather, the patient’s right to obtain a physician’s or other health care provider’s help to end their life is established by state law. Read More

Prior Authorization Policies for Pediatric ADHD Medication Prescriptions

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 6.4 million US children 4-17 years old have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The percentage of US children diagnosed with ADHD has increased by 3-5 percent per year since the 1990s. Relatedly, the percentage of children in this age group taking ADHD medication also has increased by about 7 percent per year from 2007-2008 to 2011-2012.

In response, some state Medicaid programs have implemented policies to manage the use of ADHD medications and guide physicians toward best practices for ADHD treatment in children. These policies include prescription medication prior authorization requirements that restrict approvals to patients above a certain age, or require additional provider involvement before approval for payment is granted.

In a new article published this afternoon in MMWR, CDC researchers compared Medicaid and employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) claims for “psychological services” (the procedure code category that includes behavior therapy) and ADHD medication among children aged 2–5 years receiving clinical care for ADHD.

The article references a newly released LawAtlas map that examines features of state Medicaid prior authorization policies that pertain to pediatric ADHD medication treatment, including applicable ages, medication types, and criteria for approval.

States with Medicaid programs that have a policy that requires prior authorization for ADHD medications prescribed to children younger than 28 years old.
States with Medicaid programs that have a policy that requires prior authorization for ADHD medications prescribed to children younger than 28 years old.

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