Recent Submissions

  • Syringe Service Programs Laws

    Policy Surveillance Program Staff (2023-01)
  • Tobacco Pricing Strategies

    Policy Surveillance Program Staff (2023-01)
  • Local Inclusionary Zoning Laws

    Policy Surveillance Program Staff (2023-01)
  • Eviction and the Necessary Conditions for Health

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2021-10-09)
    The COVID-19 pandemic both highlighted eviction as a public health crisis and exacerbated the problem. In a new article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, housing law experts, Katie Moran-McCabe and Scott Burris at the Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research, call for a realignment in how we think about and approach the housing crisis — and eviction in particular — in America. Moran-McCabe and Burris call for a national recognition of housing as a fundamental need, and offer a few practical recommendations on where governments may start: 1. Removing barriers to affordable, integrated development to increase the supply of new affordable housing in neighborhoods of opportunity; 2. Using legal tools to stabilize housing prices and tenancy, such as rent-stabilization laws and just-cause eviction laws; 3. Addressing economic barriers, such as high housing costs and low income for tenants, by raising the minimum wage, changing tax policies, and fully funding the federal housing voucher program. These recommendations are among many others originally presented in the sixth report in a comprehensive series for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2020, Health Equity through Housing: A Blueprint for Systematic Legal Action.
  • Identifying data for the empirical assessment of law (IDEAL): A realist approach to research gaps on the health effects of abortion law

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2021-06-11)
    Reproductive rights have been the focus of United Nations consensus documents, a priority for agencies like the WHO, and the subject of judgments issued by national and international courts. Human rights approaches have galvanised abortion law reform across numerous countries, but human rights analysis is not designed to empirically assess how legal provisions regulating abortion shape the actual delivery of abortion services and outcomes. Reliable empirical measurement of the health and social effects of abortion regulation is vital input for policymakers and public health guidance for abortion policy and practice, but research focused explicitly on assessing the health effects of abortion law and policy is limited at the global level. This paper describes a method for Identifying Data for the Empirical Assessment of Law (IDEAL), to assess potential health effects of abortion regulations. The approach was applied to six critical legal interventions: mandatory waiting periods, third-party authorisation, gestational limits, criminalisation, provider restrictions and conscientious objection. The IDEAL process allowed researchers to link legal interventions and processes that have not been investigated fully in empirical research to processes and outcomes that have been more thoroughly studied. To the extent these links are both transparent and plausible, using IDEAL to make them explicit allows both researchers and policy stakeholders to make better informed assessments and guidance related to abortion law. The IDEAL method also identifies gaps in scientific research. Given the importance of law to public health generally, the utility of IDEAL is not limited to abortion law.
  • Exploring the Legal Response to Unpredictable Scheduling Burdens for Women in the Workplace

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2021-10-28)
    Unpredictable scheduling practices subject workers to irregular and inconsistent work hours and provide them with little to no control over their schedules. These practices have been shown to cause negative health outcomes including increased stress, food and housing insecurity, and negative effects on mental and emotional wellbeing. In this project, funded by the TIME’S UP Foundation as part of the inaugural class of researchers of the Time’s Up Measure Up initiative, Center for Public Health Law Research staff explored laws at the federal, state, and local level that regulate workplace scheduling to better understand how laws that seek to address unpredictable scheduling affect women in the workplace prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The “Legal Epidemiology” of Pandemic Control

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2021-05-27)
  • Individual Liberty, Public Health, and the Battle for the Nation’s Soul

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2021-06-07)
  • The Mess in Texas: Litigating COVID-19 Abortion Restrictions

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2020-05-18)
  • Police Interventions with Persons Affected by Mental Illnesses

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2011-03-09)
    Mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders constitute a global public health problem of enormous proportions. Developing and implementing cost-effective interventions to improve the lives of people with mental illnesses and comorbid substance abuse disorders remains a challenge for multiple, interfacing service systems, from public health to social welfare to law enforcement, the courts, and corrections. This monograph illuminates one key component of these systems, policing, highlighting the role of police officers as front-line workers in the community. We examine trends in thinking and practice and common challenges surrounding policing and mental illnesses internationally. We suggest that police organizations (and their community and research partners) should not be uncritically accepting of existing intervention models without first engaging in a ‘Problem-Oriented Policing’ approach, designed so that available resources inter-lock to address the problems identified in particular geographical areas. We also examine challenges associated with implementing these steps, such as the need for police, health practitioners, and academic partners to collaborate in developing better and more integrated data collection systems to track health-related outcomes. Such extensive analysis, we argue, is fundamental to the development of tailored police interventions for persons affected by mental illnesses.
  • A Review of Three Models For Enforcing Housing Codes

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2017-04-04)
  • After June Medical Services: The Past, Present, And Future Of Regulating Reproduction

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law); Harvard Law and Policy Review (Harvard University); Florida State University College of Law (2020-06-30)
    Where does abortion law in the United States stand, and where are we headed? In the wake of Supreme Court’s landmark decision, June Medical Services v. Russo, join the authors of four influential books on reproductive health, Professors David S. Cohen, Michele Goodwin, Carol Sanger, and Mary Ziegler, for a conversation moderated by NPR’s Sarah McCammon about the past, present, and future of the law and politics of reproduction. The authors’ insights also bring into focus recent state policies that have deepened inequalities and strained access to pregnancy and abortion care during the pandemic.
  • Mandatory Testing of Radon Levels in For-Sale Homes

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2012-04-24)
    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that approximately 21,000 lung cancer cases per year in the United States are caused by exposure to radon gas in homes. In this Critical Opportunities presentation, Adam Finkel, ScD, from the University of Pennsylvania, suggests laws that require all sellers in high-level counties to test for and disclose radon levels as a condition of sale. He also suggests laws that require that ventilation fans be installed at the seller’s expense when tests reveal radon levels above the actionable level.
  • Reducing Crime by Encouraging Residential Zoning in Commercial Areas

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2012-04-24)
    In this Critical Opportunities presentation, James Anderson, JD, from RAND Corporation, explains how city blocks that have some land parcels zoned for residential use experience substantially less crime than blocks that are zoned only for commercial or industrial uses. He suggests encouraging residential zoning in commercial areas as a way to reduce crime.
  • Eliminate Dishonesties in the FDA Food Label

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2012-04-24)
    Stricter requirements for labeling regulations could eliminate dishonesties in FDA food labeling, according to Adam Finkel, ScD, University of Pennsylvania. Finkel proposes four key ways the FDA could amend its labeling regulations. These amendments would allow more information disclosure that enables the public to make more informed decisions about the food they are consuming.
  • Better Law and Policies to Reduce Gun Violence

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2013-10-17)
    In this Critical Opportunities presentation, Jeffrey Swanson, PhD, shares recommendations for the use of law to reduce the problem of gun violence. The recommendations are a package of policies that were originally presented at the Johns Hopkins Gun Policy Summit in January 2013. They include: fixing the background check system, modifying the list of gun-prohibited persons, fixing the mental health criteria for gun ownership, reforming dealer licensing and penalties for gun trafficking, requiring personalized guns, banning assault weapons, and increasing federal funding for gun violence research.
  • Strengthening State Physical Education Requirements

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2012-04-24)
    Early childhood physical activity can prevent chronic disease says Scott Hays, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He advises that setting high standards to strengthen state physical education requirements can assure that people are more physically fit.
  • Using Legal Efforts to Increase Childhood Vaccination Rates

    Center for Public Health Law Research (Temple University Beasley School of Law) (2012-04-24)
    Half of all U.S. states have increasing childhood vaccination exemption rates, according to Tanya Karwaki, JD and Patricia Kuszler, MD, JD, from the University of Washington School of Law. Karwaki and Kuszler propose that enacting laws to make exemptions more difficult to obtain could improve public health outcomes.

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