News & Insights

Public health law and policy stories that made headlines recently examined the disproportionally high maternity mortality rates for African American women, the lack of access to mental health care for children, New York’s worst measles outbreak in decades, states’ efforts to address the opioid crisis, Philadelphia’s new plan to curb gun violence, and a Missouri law that connects animal abuse and domestic violence.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a regulation that could undermine the agency’s mission to protect human and environmental health. This regulation could preclude the EPA from consulting pertinent studies, decreasing the quality of the data on which it bases its regulatory decisions.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is experiencing its 10th outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). As of January 2, 2019, 608 individuals have been infected, 368 of whom have died. Already, the outbreak is the “second-deadliest and second-largest in history.” Federal, state, tribal, and local governments should stay well informed of outbreak developments and should review their plans and procedures for response to the potential spread of EVD to the U.S.

Timely, evidence-based prenatal care dramatically improves health outcomes for pregnant women as well as their babies. However, many women in the United States lack access to timely and adequate prenatal care. Lack of access to care is particularly prevalent among women of color as well as younger women, exacerbating existing inequities.

Libraries promote health by supporting literacy in early childhood, and access to books for parents, children, young adults, and seniors. Communities throughout the country are increasingly implementing approaches to address overdue fines which can present barriers to accessing library resources.

School nurses can play a critical role in advancing child and adolescent health — including expanding access to care for many children. However, laws across the country do not yet recognize the importance of school nurses, and only one state requires a full-time registered nurse in every school.

A federal district court judge in Texas recently struck down the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate as unconstitutional and found that the rest of the Act was not severable and struck it down, too. Our overview of the decision and what’s to come.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. In 2016 alone there were close to 45,000 deaths from suicide, roughly one death every 12 minutes. In an effort to better measure the full impact of this significant public health issue, many jurisdictions require mandatory reporting of both suicides and attempted suicides. A health officer whose state was considering mandatory reporting of attempted suicides recently contacted the Network for assistance in finding examples of other states or jurisdictions where such mandatory reporting is required.

Some of the public health law and policy stories that made headlines recently include statewide initiatives to combat premature births, the midterm elections and Medicaid expansion, childhood trauma as a public health crisis, FDA crackdown on menthol in tobacco, and changes to the SNAP program.

States are encouraged to use Medicaid-managed care for coverage of non-health services that can impact the social determinants of health. Some states have used special waivers available under this option to pilot innovative new programs.

Recently, a federal district court in Connecticut diverged from precedent to rule for an employee whose medical cannabis use resulted in a blatant rescission of a prospective job offer. According to the court in Noffsinger v. SSC Niantic Operating Co., d/b/a Bride Brook Nursing & Rehab. Ctr. (Bride Brook), Connecticut’s legal protections from discrimination for employees lawfully using medical cannabis are not barred by contrary federal legal provisions. The holding differs from prior state court decisions finding that employers generally have no duty to accommodate medical cannabis patients.

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.