Power Sharing, Capacity Building, and Community Leadership: Common Elements of Public Health Practice and Community Lawyering

Law & Policy InsightsMechanisms for Advancing Health Equity

March 29, 2021

Community lawyering, also called movement lawyering, is an approach to social justice which de-centers lawyers as the linchpins of change and instead focuses on empowering communities and movements. The updated 2020 10 Essential Public Health Services include core values and activities that are also reflected in community lawyering. Among these priorities are communicating to inform and educate, mobilizing communities and partnerships, supporting laws to advance health equity, and ensuring equitable access to services needed for health.

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Women’s History Month: Network Attorneys Discuss Law and Policy Solutions to Promote Women’s Health & Wellbeing

Law & Policy InsightsMaternal and Child HealthMechanisms for Advancing Health EquityMedicaidMental Health and Well-Being

March 24, 2021
by April Shaw, Carrie Waggoner, Colleen Healy Boufides, Dawn Hunter, Jill Krueger and Leila Barraza

In honor of Women's History Month, women in the Network’s Health Equity Working Group have highlighted legal or policy issues affecting women’s health that they see as critically important. The topics addressed cover: economic stability and well-being, pregnancy discrimination, period poverty, and maternal depression. The law and policy solutions discussed here have the potential to improve life for women and girls for generations to come.

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Moving Past Disbelief in Systemic Racism to Understand What it Means For Health Equity

Law & Policy InsightsMechanisms for Advancing Health Equity

March 23, 2021
by Dawn Hunter

Since the Biden Administration released its plan to advance racial equity in the United States, there has been significant pushback against the idea that systemic racism even exists. This questioning is not new, but it has taken on a renewed fervor as state and local governments, professional associations, hospitals and health systems, and corporations have made public commitments to addressing systemic racism and treating racism as a public health crisis.

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Our Statement on Violence Against Asian Communities and Racism as a Public Health Crisis

Network NewsCOVID-19 and Health Equity

March 22, 2021

The rise in anti-Asian sentiment is closely intertwined with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the xenophobic language used by some government leaders has further fueled discrimination and hate crimes against Asian communities in America. The violent, physical attacks on people of Asian descent around the country, and the horrific shootings in Atlanta — which the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and many other communities believe was racially motivated — are glaring examples of why racism is a public health crisis.

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One Month of Executive Orders for the Biden Administration: Public Health Impact

Law & Policy InsightsCOVID-19

March 19, 2021

As of February 20, 2021, President Biden had issued 34 Executive Orders (EOs), several of which are intended to protect the public’s health. While the majority of the EOs use the power of the federal government to protect Americans from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are also measures designed to strengthen our public health infrastructure more broadly, and specifically relate to the impact of climate change.

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COVID-19’s Impact on State Public Health Laws Requires Careful Deliberation, Not a Rush to Legislate

Law & Policy InsightsCOVID-19

March 11, 2021
by Jill Krueger

As efforts are made to examine and evaluate the response to COVID-19 both generally and within public health specifically, states are taking a variety of approaches. Legislators in some states are seeking to clarify and bolster emergency powers and public health authority, while legislators in other states are seeking to curtail them sharply. The process unfolding in state legislatures has the potential to affect substantive developments in emergency powers and public health authority for years to come and should therefore be done only after careful consideration and discussion.

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President Biden’s Memorandum on Women’s Health: Improved Reproductive Care Access for Women is on the Horizon

Law & Policy InsightsMaternal and Child Health

March 10, 2021
by Jennifer Piatt

On January 28, President Biden issued the Memorandum on Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad to address the previous administration’s “global” and “domestic” rules preventing U.S.- funded entities from consulting on, referring for, or providing abortion services, which presented clear obstacles to healthcare access for low-income women in the U.S. and globally. The memorandum is an important step toward increasing access to reproductive care.

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Public Health Law News Roundup – March 2021

Law & Policy Insights

March 10, 2021

Some of the public health law and policy issues in the headlines in recent weeks include the Biden administration’s efforts to implement a national COVID-19 testing strategy; the city of Sante Fe’s innovative approach to addressing homelessness; a House bill that would significantly expand voting rights; a Colorado bill providing added protections for public health workers; vaccine mandates for health care workers; a new law in California that expands access to mental health and addiction treatments; and COVID-19 vaccination registration and information websites that violate disability laws.

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Individual Rights and the Public’s Health: Constitutional, Ethical, and Political Aspects of COVID-19 Measures and Their Enforcement

Law & Policy InsightsCOVID-19Legislation and Legal Challenges

February 24, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the tension between individual rights and the public good to the forefront of the national discourse. Many pandemic response measures—such as stay-at-home orders, mandatory business closures or restrictions, and mask mandates—have evoked vocal opposition by individuals who feel these measures infringe on their freedom. Despite the authority of public health to implement these measures, noncompliance has been a significant issue.

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