Tag: Public Health Law Research

Back view of a little boy wearing a backpack walking to school

Zeroing In on “Zero Tolerance” School Discipline Laws

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research 1 Comment

By Alexandra Hess

Exclusionary school discipline (ESD) policies, also known as Zero Tolerance policies, enforce disciplinary measures like suspension, expulsion, or law enforcement referral to address particular student behaviors.

Though it began as part of the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, which mandated one-year expulsion for possessing a firearm at school, ESD became more widely adopted over time. Now, the policies apply nationwide to a broad range of behaviors — from damaging property and fighting, to possessing a cell phone or tobacco, as well as behaviors described by subjective terms often undefined in the law, like willful defiance, obscenity, or profanity. Read More

Black silhouette of girl with a pony tail looking down in a dark tunnel

Suicide Prevention and Patient Safety

John Tingle Leave a comment

Suicide prevention needs to be taken more seriously globally by governments, health systems as an urgent public health concern.

WHO (World Health Organisation) states that close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which translates to one person dying every 40 seconds. For each adult who died by suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15 to 29-year-olds globally, and occurs throughout the lifespan. Read More

hand reaching for blue pills

Author Q&A: Reducing High-Dose Opioid Prescribing

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Sara Heins, PhD
Sara Heins, PhD, Associate Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

From 1999 to 2017, almost 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2017 than in 1999, according to the CDC.

Previous research has indicated that patients who receive higher doses of prescription opioids have an increased risk of overdose and mortality. In response, several states have established Morphine Equivalent Daily Dose (MEDD) thresholds that convert opioid prescriptions to their equivalent dose in morphine and divides the total prescription by the number of days the prescription is intended to last, allowing for comparison among different opioid formulations and strengths. MEDD policies set thresholds for prescribers, which may only be exceeded in limited circumstances, such as when being prescribed to certain patient groups or as short-courses.

Sara Heins, PhD, an associate policy researcher at RAND Corporation, used policy surveillance to track MEDD policies through June 1, 2017 (data are available on LawAtlas.org). She published an article in Pain Medicine on March 13 that describes U.S. MEDD policies.

We asked Dr. Heins a few questions about her work and this recent publication. Read More

Learning from Patient Deaths in the NHS

John Tingle Leave a comment

The independent regulator of health and social care in England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has just published a report on how the National Health Service (NHS) is progressing in the first year of implementing national guidance on learning from deaths.

The report follows on from another published in 2016 which detailed major failings and concerns about the way the NHS investigate and learn from the deaths of patients in their care. The 2019 report contains several case studies which detail experiences of implementing the national guidance. 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.

 

Read More

Healthcare professional walking down a hospital hallway

An Urgent Need to Improve Mental Health Care in the National Health Service

John Tingle Leave a comment

Mental Health Care in the National Health Service in England has always existed in the shadow of physical care in terms of funding and NHS-government health policy priorities.

Many in the past have termed it the “Cinderella” part of the NHS. This neglect has been chronicled in numerous reports over the years pointing to many problems which include chronic under funding, poor patient safety, abuses of patient rights, poor complaint handling, unnecessary restrictive care regimes, poor patient, health carer communication, and poor patient satisfaction. Read More

UCL A&E entrance

The NHS Complaints System: Wither the Toxic Cocktail Image?

John Tingle 1 Comment

The National Health Service in England has been trying for many years to get its complaints system right, but it has never succeeded. A great number of reports have been published on the system over the years, some dating back for at least a quarter of a century.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC ) the independent regulator of health and social care in England have just published a report launching a “Declare Your Care” campaign, which raises several important issues about the NHS complaints system. Read More

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

Pennsylvania Not Alone in Denying Abortion Coverage for Low-Income Women

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By Adrienne Ghorashi

Last week, a lawsuit was filed challenging Pennsylvania’s decades-old statute restricting the use of state Medicaid funding to pay for abortion services. The lawsuit, brought by a group of abortion providers in the state, claims the restriction discriminates against low-income women on the basis of sex, in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Read More