As Co-Director, Mid-States Region, Colleen Healy Boufides, J.D., is responsible for overseeing development and expansion of the region’s state-specific and workforce development activities. She is particularly interested in legal issues relating to public health authority and decision-making; environmental health and justice; community health workers; and collaboration with medical-legal partnerships (MLP). Before joining the Network in 2016, Colleen provided policy and operational support to federally qualified health centers at the Michigan Primary Care Association. Prior to that, she worked as a litigation associate at a large Michigan-based law firm. Colleen received her law degree from the Duke University School of Law and her Bachelor of Science degree from Arizona State University – the Barrett Honors College. She is licensed to practice law in Michigan.
Medical-legal Partnerships (MLPs) integrate lawyers into health care settings to assist with patient care by addressing structural problems that impact health. As a result, MLPs help identify ways in which laws harm population health and perpetuate health disparities.
Recently passed resolutions in the House and Senate recognize the importance, effectiveness and need for trauma-informed care. The resolutions cite examples of trauma informed practices, programs and policies implemented, many from local communities with some involving a legal component.
Social and economic disadvantages create barriers to good health. Laws and policies can contribute to barriers, but can also be used to advance health equity. This webinar previews three sessions from the upcoming 2018 Public Health Law Conference. Panelists will discuss how telehealth can be employed to increase access to health care in underserved communities, how medical-legal partnerships can help address socioeconomic factors impacting health, and efforts at the State level to promote and strengthen benefits for children that are guaranteed by Medicaid.
In 2014, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city of Flint, Michigan, switched its water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. As a result, lead from the aging service lines to homes leached into the drinking water and poisoned thousands of Flint residents.
This report, co-authored by attorneys from the Network for Public Health Law and the University of Michigan School of Public Health, details why shortcomings in the structure and implementation of laws related to public health, safe drinking water, and emergency financial management failed to stop or mitigate the Flint water crisis. Along with key findings, the report provides recommendations to help prevent similar crises from happening in other communities.
This handbook is intended to help policymakers and practitioners incorporate the lessons learned from the Flint Water Crisis to avert and/or mitigate future crises.
This primer is intended to help policymakers and practitioners incorporate the lessons learned from the Flint Water Crisis to avert and/or mitigate future crises.
A recent $3.5-million jury verdict awarded to residents of a bed-bug infested apartment complex in Los Angeles illuminates issues raised by many bed bug cases, including whether the burden to eliminate bedbugs should be placed on landlords or tenants; whether current state laws and local ordinances are effective in addressing bed bug issues and affording relief to victims; and whether these laws encourage productive behavior by landlords and tenants.
Designed for public health practitioners, lawyers, researchers and scientists, government and healthcare officials, and business and community leaders, this three-part webinar series, co-sponsored by the Network and the Center for Public Health Law Research, will explore the interdisciplinary messaging teamwork necessary to fashion legal and policy interventions in these politically polarized times. Using concepts and frameworks adapted from both Moral Foundations Theory and the Five Essential Public Health Law Services, the presenters will describe fresh approaches and practical examples for convincing lawmakers and the public to adopt new policies during these challenging times.
Effective messaging of public health issues and solutions is essential to public health practice and especially to developing public health laws and policies in a polarized political environment. A number of strategies presented in the workshop were grounded in Moral Foundations Theory, which offers insights into moral psychology and decision-making that are helpful for understanding how value judgments are made.
Some of the public health law and policy stories that made headlines in March include a call by physicians for policy changes to better address the opioid epidemic, states’ efforts on oral health care access for the elderly, the effects of gun laws on suicide rates, and a new federal law requiring water companies to notify customers of lead and other dangerous contaminants in water.
Frustrated by what they perceive as insufficient federal legislative and executive efforts to address climate change, a group of young plaintiffs and other activists have filed suit against the federal government, citing a wide variety of health-related harms they have suffered because of the government’s inability to reduce carbon emissions.
