Law plays a crucial role in protecting the health of populations. Whether the public health threat is bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, obesity, or lung cancer, law is an essential tool for addressing the problem. Yet for many decades, courts and lawyers have frequently overlooked law’s critical importance to public health. Populations, Public Health, and the Law seeks to remedy that omission. The book demonstrates why public health protection is a vital objective for the law and presents a new population-based approach to legal analysis that can help law achieve its public health mission while remaining true to its own core values. By looking at a diverse range of topics, including food safety, death and dying, and pandemic preparedness, Wendy E. Parmet shows how a population-based legal analysis that recalls the importance of populations and uses the tools of public health can enhance legal decision making while protecting both public health and the rights and liberties of individuals and their communities.

“This book is very well researched, organized, documented, and referenced. The case studies are relevant to specific public health issues related to race, gender, equity, sexual orientation, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, and chronic diseases facing U.S. populations in the 21st century. The book offers background information for professionals to try to analyze the root causes and develop public health measures to ameliorate these problems." ---Doody's Review Service, 4 stars Public Health Law: Concepts and Case Studies is a practical textbook for students of public health and health policy with comprehensive coverage of core concepts in law across public health sectors. The text builds upon the understanding that law is a significant determinant of health while highlighting essential knowledge of legal issues and laws affecting public health outcomes. Chapters address major topics in United States public health law and take a competency-based approach influenced by models developed by the CDC’s Public Health Law Program. The book describes the most important and relevant considerations of the law through case studies and real-world examples that students and practitioners of public health need as a baseline in order to mitigate health inequities and public health threats. Written with a basis in health equity, chapters also include call-out boxes to appropriate health equity related principles and theories. The book’s three parts explore law as a foundation for public health practice, law in everyday practice, and law as a transdisciplinary public health tool. It addresses key legal concepts such as the sources of authority in the United States legal system, constitutional foundations, limitations of authority, regulation, and litigation as they relate to public health. The most prevalent public health law topics and national public health strategies are covered in clear prose and offer guidance on the law and legal issues related to immunization, infectious disease control, chronic disease prevention and management, unintentional and intentional injury prevention, emergency law, global public health, environmental law, LGBT populations and the law, women’s reproductive health topics and more. Hypothetical case studies throughout illustrate how law impacts public health practice across a variety of settings and populations. Content on the transdisciplinary nature of public health practice spans topics such as law as a social determinant of health, the Health in All Policies initiative, legal epidemiology, law and ethics, and the scope of public health decision-making. Insightful and practical in its approach, Public Health Law: Concepts and Case Studies provides students and public health practitioners alike with knowledge and tools for utilizing the law to advance public health goals in the communities they serve. Key Features: Includes practical, real-world case studies illustrating the intersection of law and public health in many different contexts Highlights health equity and social justice issues relevant to chapter topics Explains legal frameworks and challenging legal concepts in easy to read prose Highlights relevant legal issues and considerations during the COVID-19 pandemic Includes access to the fully downloadable eBook as well as instructor ancillary materials such as Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoints, and Test Bank

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to examine three topics in relation to public health: measurement, the law, and funding. IOM prepared a three book series-one book on each topic-that contain actionable recommendations for public health agencies and other stakeholders that have roles in the health of the U.S population. For the Public's Health: Revitalizing Law and Policy to Meet New Challenges is the second in the For the Public Health's Series, and reflects on legal and public policy reform on three levels: first, laws that establish the structure, duties, and authorities of public health departments; second, the use of legal and policy tools to improve the public's health; and third, the health effects of laws and policies from other sectors in and outside government. The book recommends that states enact legislation with appropriate funding to ensure that all public health departments have the mandate and the capacity to effectively deliver the Ten Essential Public Health Services. The book also recommends that states revise their laws to require public health accreditation for state and local health departments through the Public Health Accreditation Board accreditation process. The book urges government agencies to familiarize themselves with the public health and policy interventions at their disposal that can influence behavior and more importantly change conditions-social, economic, and environmental-to improve health. Lastly, the IOM encourages government and private-sector stakeholders to consider health in a wide range of policies (a health in all policies approach) and to evaluate the health effects and costs of major legislation. This book, as well as the other two books in the series, is intended to inform and help federal, state, and local governments, public health agencies, clinical care organizations, the private sector, and community-based organizations.

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

A population-based approach to legal analysis which claims that law should seek, among other things, to protect and promote public health.

"In this completely revised second edition, Gostin analyzes the major health threats of our times, from emerging infectious diseases (e.g., SARS and pandemic influenza) to bioterrorism (e.g., the deliberate release of anthrax and smallpox) to chronic diseases caused by overweight and obesity. By analyzing transnational law, Gostin shows how public health law transcends national borders in areas ranging from infectious disease and tobacco use to world trade and access to essential medicines. Public Health Law creates an intellectual framework for the modern field of public health and supports that framework with illustrations of the intellectual, scientific, political, and ethical issues involved. In proposing innovative solutions for the future of the public's health, Gostin's essential study provides a blueprint for coming public and political debates about this vital and burgeoning field."--BOOK JACKET.

Now revised and expanded to cover today’s most pressing health threats, Public Health Law and Ethics probes the legal and ethical issues at the heart of public health through an incisive selection of government reports, scholarly articles, and relevant court cases. Companion to the internationally acclaimed text Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, this reader can also be used as a stand-alone resource for students, practitioners, scholars,and teachers. It encompasses global issues that have changed the shape of public health in recent years including anthrax, SARS, pandemic flu, biosecurity, emergency preparedness, and the transition from infectious to chronic diseases caused by lifestyle changes in eating and physical activity. In addition to covering these new arenas, it includes discussion of classic legal and ethical tensions inherent to public health practice, such as how best to balance the police power of the state with individual autonomy.