As of February 1, 2017 state laws disparately regulate patient registration and civil rights, product safety labeling and packaging, and dispensaries, creating a patchwork of regulatory strategies whose effectiveness remains unknown.
Health Research Inc./New York State Department of Health
Formula supplementation of breastfed infants varies across hospitals. Hospital breastfeeding policies and supplementation practices contribute to this variation. Improving hospital practices could lead to improved breastfeeding outcomes.
University of Washington, Office of Sponsored Programs
This study describes patient characteristics, clinical features, and EMS response to opioid overdoses in Seattle, comparing heroin and pharmaceutical opioid (PO) overdoses from six alternating months in 2011. While they are clinical similar, the study finds that heroin and pharmaceutical opioid overdoses are treated differently by responders.
Using data from the UberResearch NIH grant repository, researchers from the Center for Public Health Law Research and UberResearch in Cambridge, Mass., collected and coded all National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants with a focus on health policy between FY’85 and FY’14 and then analyzed the grants by funding agency and topic areas. The study finds that NIH has supported public health law research, but not to the extent necessary to timely evaluate laws affecting the public’s health.
From 2013 to 2014, researchers conducted 47 semi-structured interviews with school and district administrators in Iowa about its 2007 anti-bullying law. Administrators identified many policy implementation challenges related to funding and staff, prevention programs, applying the law’s bullying definition in investigations, and understanding the school’s jurisdiction for policy enforcement. They also raised contextual barriers to implementation, like media portrayals of bullying and parental attitudes.
This legal map includes more than 100 components of city and county ordinances in Washington that govern the zoning and siting for businesses that produce, process and sell recreational and medical marijuana, as well as regulations governing individual access to the products.
Four longitudinal, empirical legal maps on LawAtlas.org that explore state-level HIA and HiAP bills and laws that were introduced, enacted and/or amended between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2016.
The authors describe Five Essential Public Health Law Services and suggest investment in the people, methods and tools needed to move major policy initiatives from conception to widespread implementation. The model reflects a transdisciplinary approach integrating public health legal practice with law-related surveillance, evaluation and enforcement functions usually performed by public health practitioners. As an elaboration of law-related activities within the Ten Essential Public Health Services, the framework can be used to define, evaluate and strengthen public health law functions.
Each week, the team from the Policies for Action Research Hub posts a summary of the latest news in housing equity and law. Visit the Harvard Petrie-Flom Center's Bill of Health Law to see all the weekly reviews.
