By Scott Burris Start with the sad news of the week. Dave Purchase died, aged 73. Dave was the father of needle exchange in the US, which as far as anyone can say started with Dave and a TV tray in disregard of Oregon’s drug paraphernalia law. Dave was a father figure to a whole…
By Stephen Latham [cross-posted at his blog, A Blog on Bioethics] I’m freshly back from the annual meeting of the Public Health Law Research program, sponsored by Robert Wood Johnson. At most academic meetings, I prefer schmoozing in the halls to listening to the talks. That’s part personal vice, and part stage-of-career: at this point, it matters more who…
By Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research This past week, PHLR hosted 150 researchers, lawyers, public health practitioners and others for our fourth annual meeting. With our theme for the conference in mind, “Driving Legal Innovation,” our attendees shared results of evaluations of laws and regulations, offered up suggestions for new ways to…
By Scott Burris The main contests (a summary of previous posts): A lot of people in public health practice seem to be (appropriately) concerned about our public health infrastructure – the agencies within public health systems where day to day work is done. Public health infrastructure tends to get taken for granted and neglected. Core…
By Scott Burris In a well-known exchange, Richard Epstein argued that modern public health had strayed far outside its traditional and proper work of preventing epidemics and injuries into a realm of social engineering in which it lacked both competence and legitimacy. William Novak, the historian, disagreed, emphasizing the continuity of our public quest for…
By Scott Burris Law has been an extremely effective mode of public health intervention in the last thirty years, which means that proponents of its use have won more than a few tough political battles. Nonetheless, it is hard to escape the fact that, in recent years, the public health side has been getting killed…
By Scott Burris Phil Coffin and Sean Sullivan have published a cost-effectiveness study of interventions that equip heroin users and others to administer naloxone in the event of a witnessed opioid overdose. Naloxone is the standard antidote, and can easily be administered by lay people with a minimum amount of training. Family members and friends…
By Scott Burris Early in January, Lindsay Wiley and the Network for Public Health Law will convene a group of health law professors and (and a few colleagues from public health law practice) in Washington. They will be spending a couple of days advancing a conversation about how academic health lawyers can make a bigger…
By Scott Burris, JD “I have an absolute right to drive any vehicle I want, on any road, at any time, at any speed, and under any conditions.” That’s an argument few people would take seriously. And few people would take seriously the argument that we should ban or substantially limit automobile use, despite the…
By Hosea H. Harvey, JD, PhD Last week, Ohio joined the vast majority of states that have enacted laws designed to reduce long-term health consequences for youth athletes who suffer concussions (technically, traumatic brain injuries or TBIs) in organized youth sports activities. Based on my research for an upcoming article “Reducing Traumatic Brain Injuries in…
