Kathleen Hoke, J.D., serves as Director, Eastern Region, a position she has held since the Network launched in 2010. She is also a law school professor and director of the Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.
As director of the Network’s Eastern Region Office, Kathleen oversees work on a myriad of issues, including injury prevention; housing law and policy; regulation of cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco; food security; maternal and child health; and oral health. She brings her expertise on the sources and scope of state and local public health powers to work in examining recent changes in laws impacting public health authority that have been proposed and passed in response to public health agency action during the pandemic. She has also guided the Eastern Region’s work in supporting public health officials in understanding and seeking better laws to deter and penalize those who threaten public health officials. The work of the Eastern Region Office, and the Network as a whole, centers on health equity with a deep focus on law and policy that diminishes the detrimental impact of structural racism.
Kathleen was given the UMB President’s Award for Excellence in 2020 and in 2016 received the Jennifer Robbins Award for the Practice of Public Health Law by the American Public Health Association Law Section. Since 2020, Kathleen has served on the editorial board of the Centers for Disease and Control publication, Preventing Chronic Disease. She serves a variety of professional organizations and was appointed by Maryland’s Governor to the Maryland State Council on Cancer Control from 2018 to 2022.
After receiving her B.S. from Towson University, Kathleen graduated as a member of the Order of the Coif from the University of Maryland School of Law. She completed a clerkship with the Honorable Lawrence Rodowsky of the Maryland Court of Appeals and served with distinction as an Assistant Attorney General and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of Maryland prior to joining the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.
by Overview 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET | June 22, 2021The COVID-19 pandemic has created profound challenges to public health’s efforts to protect…
The first in a series of articles by Network attorneys on major public health law and policy developments over the past 10 years. In this article, Eastern Region Office Director Kathleen Hoke shares her insights into how laws designed to reduce the harm from tobacco use have changed, and the significant strides the public health community has made to reduce tobacco use initiation and increase tobacco cessation.
Join Network attorneys as they highlight their top choices for pivotal, influential judicial decisions over the past year on topics including emergency legal preparedness, religious freedoms, reproductive rights, food insecurity, health justice, and the future of the ACA.
In the U.S., criminal defendants have the right to be represented by an attorney and states and jurisdictions must provide an attorney free of charge to defendants who cannot afford one. Advocates have sought the same right for citizens facing civil cases, including evictions. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought light to the eviction crisis, the critical need for housing stability, and the role that lawyers can play in protecting tenants from unlawful and abusive eviction.
This resource provides a summary of the laws and regulations regarding water fluoridation in each U.S. state and select jurisdictions.
This webinar reviewed the actions taken by the federal government to prevent foreclosure and by state and local governments to prevent evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Public health leaders have criticized a recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposal that would place an increased burden on those seeking to prove discrimination in housing practices. While the HUD proposal moves through the regulatory process, another federal agency, the Department of Justice, continues to do its part to prevent discrimination in housing and punish those who engage in unfair and illegal housing practices.
Although the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act directed the FDA to propose graphic warnings to be required on cigarette packages and advertising by June 2011, cigarette packages and ads in the US still do not contain graphic warnings. In August 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with other public health organizations, filed suit against the FDA seeking to force the Agency to propose graphic warnings as mandated by Congress.
This fact sheet provides examples of ways that states have chosen to address Medicaid billing for school nursing, highlighting the need for states to consider expanding Medicaid coverage for school nursing services by amending state laws.
Concern over immigration enforcement can prevent immigrants from obtaining needed health care. Many immigrants worry that health workers will share their undocumented status with immigration authorities. Removing barriers to immigrants’ utilization of preventative and other health care services is important for public health. This issue brief explores relevant federal and state health privacy laws and how they apply to undocumented immigrants and provides information on health care providers’ rights and responsibilities when providing health care to immigrants.
Among the most pressing public health issues of 2018, access to healthcare, electronic nicotine delivery systems, injury prevention, and food insecurity saw significant legislation and policy impacts. In this webinar, subject matter experts will recap how four important public health initiatives—expansion of scope of practice; regulation of electronic nicotine delivery systems; traumatic brain injury prevention; and food insecurity and SNAP—were impacted in 2018.
Many states allow for license suspension for non-payment of fees and fines for traffic offenses. These suspensions often have significant health impacts, some of which seem obvious—people need transportation to access medical care. But a closer look reveals a plethora of other negative consequences that impact public health.
