News & Insights

The Flint, Michigan, water crisis was a manmade disaster that resulted in the poisoning of thousands of children and adults after lead leached into the city’s drinking water; sadly, the harm to Flint residents is still impacting the community today. In this Q&A, Network senior attorney Colleen Healy Boufides, discusses a report she co-authored that examines the legal failures that lead to the crisis as well as what can be learned with regard to public health practice to protect other communities.

WIC is a highly effective program that helps address the food insecurity of young children. However, WIC benefits end at age five, the assumption being that children will start school and participate in the National School Lunch Program. However, thousands of children do not start school until age six, leaving a critical gap in benefits and creating negative effects on the food security of families.

Supervised consumption spaces (SCS) provide safe spaces where persons can consume opioids under the supervision of licensed medical professionals. SCS have proven effective at reducing overdose deaths in those countries where they have been studied. In the U.S., SCS face legal challenges that statewide legal reforms (or in some cases, emergency declarations) seek to address.

Of the ninety-seven children who have died from influenza since the start of the flu season in October, the CDC said that 3 out of 4 of them had not gotten a flu vaccine. Expanding mandatory flu vaccine laws for preschool aged children could significantly impact overall flu vaccination rates and reduce the number of flu related illnesses and deaths.

Overuse of smartphones is associated with a variety of negative health effects. As technology, our culture, and the evidence continue to evolve, public health has a role to play in educating young people, their parents, and the public about the risks and benefits of smartphone use, and in the development of laws to address the risks of excessive smartphone use and addiction.

A requester contacted the Network noting that it is a misdemeanor for pharmacists to sell drug paraphernalia in his state and that there were also no needle exchange sites in the state. Limited access to drug paraphernalia may increase the likelihood that intravenous drug users will share needles, increasing the spread of diseases like HIV and hepatitis C. The requester wanted to know if other states have similar laws and what strategies for harm reduction have been used in those states.

The creation and enforcement of municipal laws criminalizing homelessness are escalating in U.S. cities. Much like the criminalization of HIV, the criminalization of homelessness creates additional barriers to housing, health care, employment and other basic human needs, perpetuating the cycle of homelessness and corresponding health inequities.

When Amazon purchased Wholefoods for $13.7 billion in 2017, most people did not think of how this might affect low-income Americans living in food deserts. However, thanks to the 2014 Farm Bill, the power of online food retail will soon help increase food access for some of the 41.2 million Americans struggling with food insecurity.

A growing body of research establishes that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may negatively affect health and well-being throughout a person’s life span. The impact of ACEs, however, can be ameliorated by trauma-informed practices, such as through early childhood interventions that mitigate social and environmental risks for families and promote resilience. Wisconsin has been a leader in integrating trauma-informed policy across its state government.

A recent $3.5-million jury verdict awarded to residents of a bed-bug infested apartment complex in Los Angeles illuminates issues raised by many bed bug cases, including whether the burden to eliminate bedbugs should be placed on landlords or tenants; whether current state laws and local ordinances are effective in addressing bed bug issues and affording relief to victims; and whether these laws encourage productive behavior by landlords and tenants.

For the first time, the federal government has given a state permission to impose work requirements as a condition for Medicaid coverage. As troubling as these policy developments are, there is a more disturbing assumption underlying them. In its efforts to justify work requirements as a legitimate feature of a Medicaid program, the administration relies on a distorted concept of the social determinants of health.

The number of Americans affected by the opioid epidemic has reached staggering rates. In 2016, more Americans died from drug overdoses than died through the entirety of the Vietnam War. Fortunately, there is an effective, evidence-based way of treating opioid use disorder (OUD) – treatment with the medications methadone and buprenorphine, which is termed medication-assisted treatment (MAT).