Fact Sheet

Text messaging can provide health departments with an efficient means of sharing timely public health information such as guidance, announcements, and emergency alerts. While texting can be an effective tool for protecting the public’s health, it raises important privacy issues that health departments must consider when developing texting initiatives. This fact sheet examines one piece of that legal framework: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and regulations implemented by the Federal Communications Commission that govern certain kinds of texting.

The influx of new customers created by the legalization of adult-use cannabis can place a strain on a state’s cannabis supply. This increased demand can present a challenge to the state’s medical cannabis system and potentially reduce patient access to medical cannabis. This fact sheet examines various state policies aimed at protecting patient access to medical cannabis.

Access to timely data is essential for local health departments to provide critical public health interventions. Unfortunately, public health data is typically routed to state agencies where legal barriers, both actual and perceived, to sharing that data back to local health departments are encountered. The Illinois legislature recently passed sweeping legislation regarding access to public health data by local health departments. This fact sheet examines this new legislation and how it may transform local public health access to key data.

By one estimate, thirty-five percent of transgender youth find themselves in a state with laws banning gender affirming care. However, the Network has identified at least thirteen laws across ten states and the District of Columbia that seek to protect access to gender-affirming care as well as reproductive health care in the same act. This factsheet takes a closer look at legislation that couples transgender rights with reproductive rights.

Substantial and important changes to reimbursements for school-based Medicaid services were made in 2023 due to the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This resource explains the new federal law and provides an overview of various state legislative approaches to Medicaid coverage for school nursing services.

As a result of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs, advocates on both sides of the abortion issue turned to state constitutions to determine the contours of a right to abortion or to make clear no such right exists under state law. When abortion was on the ballot in 2022, voters in several states rallied to enshrine the right to abortion in state constitutions and rejected attempts to further restrict abortions in their states. In the wake of these successful ballot measures, state legislators throughout the country have sought to amend ballot initiative processes ahead of the 2024 elections. This fact sheet outlines recent proposed amendments by several states that are intended to thwart pro-abortion ballot initiatives.

In Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden, the Eleventh Circuit vacated a lower court decision invalidating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) transportation mask mandate. Because the mask mandate would have ended on its own terms when the federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency expired on May 11, 2023, the Eleventh Circuit determined the case was moot. This Q&A describes the doctrine of mootness and the implications of this case.

This Fact Sheet provides an overview of state-level legislation introduced or enacted since 2016 related to National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS).

Incarcerated workers across the U.S. provide valuable goods and services, producing items used in state and local government agencies and engaging in work like road repair, firefighting, and post-disaster clean-up. They generate more than $2 billion a year in goods and $9 billion a year in services, but are not covered by typical workplace protections, like minimum wage and workplace safety laws. It is important for states to strike a balance between the requirements for prison labor and protecting the health and well-being of incarcerated people. This Fact Sheet summarizes prison procurement laws in states in the Network’s Southeastern Region, prompted by a question from the state of Virginia.

Variations among jurisdictions in determining and reporting causes of death and delays in obtaining and reporting fatality data often result in an incomplete and out-of-date view of the overdose epidemic in the U.S. It is imperative that health departments, harm reduction organizations, and people who use drugs are provided with accurate, timely and actionable information on drug-related overdose. This fact sheet provides a snapshot of current laws, regulations, and sub-regulatory sources governing mandatory disease reporting and a description of the laws and regulations governing reporting of overdoses in the jurisdictions that require or explicitly permit it as of March 31, 2023.

This fact sheet details the state laws that require private insurers to cover at least one formulation of naloxone and those that reduce barriers to access naloxone where it is covered. Because these laws were written during a time when no over the counter (OTC) naloxone formulations were available, none explicitly require coverage for OTC naloxone.

Medication abortion (or the “abortion pill”) generally refers to the use of two medications—mifepristone and misoprostol—to safely end an early pregnancy. Importantly, it does not refer to use of Plan B emergency contraceptive; in December 2022, FDA updated Plan B’s packaging insert to expressly acknowledge that it functions to prevent conception, not to end a pregnancy. In 2020, medication abortion was used for 53 percent of all U.S. abortions. However, since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on June 24, 2022, 15 states have implemented near-total abortion bans (though bans in select states including Indiana, Ohio, and Wyoming are currently blocked by state courts).