News & Insights

Overdose “Good Samaritan” laws are theoretically designed to encourage people to call for help in an overdose emergency by providing limited legal immunity to overdose victims and those who seek help for them, but many of these laws currently have limitations that discourage people from seeking help.

A public health professional contacted the Network to ask if the Network could provide them with data use agreement templates for use by local public health authorities?

In 2020, we’re focusing on ways to further empower the public health workforce with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to support programs that will have lasting impact.

In the midst of New York City’s largest measles outbreak in three decades, health officials from the city reached out to the Network for its expertise in utilizing vaccination laws and mandates to protect the public’s health. Network attorneys provided the agency with the research and information it needed to make the best evidence-based decisions for its communities—decisions that would prevent or survive legal challenge.

Due to a shortage of dental care providers, an inequitable burden of preventable oral health disease persists for many Americans. Public health officials in Minnesota sought legal and policy pathways to expand access to care in their state. Research and analysis by the Network outlined collaborative practice strategies dental professionals can utilize to expand access to oral health care in Minnesota and nationwide.

Healthy soil contains organic matter that contributes to the nutritional quality of food and can have a significant impact on agricultural output. It also plays a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change by reducing erosion and storm water runoff, protecting against drought, and reducing carbon emissions. Policymakers at both the federal and local level are increasingly including laws and provisions that promote healthy soils in their environmental policies and legislation.

Public health leaders have criticized a recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposal that would place an increased burden on those seeking to prove discrimination in housing practices. While the HUD proposal moves through the regulatory process, another federal agency, the Department of Justice, continues to do its part to prevent discrimination in housing and punish those who engage in unfair and illegal housing practices.

In 2019, several states passed strict laws limiting access to abortion. Some state laws specifically aim to overturn the seminal case, Roe v. Wade. Proposed legislation modeled after the Voting Rights Act seeks to require states with a history of restricting access to abortion to preclear any new abortion law with the Department of Justice before such law or practice can take effect.

The medium through which an environmental exposure occurs (e.g., water, air, soil) is often geographically based and/or clustered. For this reason, responding to an environmental health threat in a meaningful and timely way requires real-time, granular data and prompt local action. The broad range of potentially relevant environmental health data sources highlights one of the key legal challenges with obtaining and using local data: often each type of data (hazard, exposure and health outcome) is governed by a different law and may be collected by a different entity.

Public health law and policy stories that made headlines recently include expanding Medicaid access post-postpartum to improve maternal mortality rates; how changes in naloxone access laws could save thousands of lives; Juul’s suspension of flavored e-cigarette product sales amid growing scrutiny of its advertising practices; how proposed food-stamp cutbacks could worsen obesity and food insecurity in the U.S.; and a landmark ruling on supervised injection sites.

Syringe service programs (SSP) are places where people who inject drugs (PWID) can receive new syringes and other injection equipment and drop off used supplies. They typically also provide other harm reduction and health promotion services including referrals to treatment, hepatitis C and HIV testing, the overdose reversal medication naloxone, and other related services. Nevertheless, SSPs are controversial due to stigma around PWID and many states prohibit the use of state funds for the operation of SSPs.

Title X is the only federally funded program for low-income patients exclusively dedicated to providing family planning and preventative services, including contraception and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer and STDs. Title X serves some four million people a year, most of them women. However, recent rule changes threaten to severely limit women’s access to these essential services.