Students in public health, law, public policy, and other social science programs are the future of public health practice and need to understand concepts, strategies, and skills in legal epidemiology to effectively create, implement, and promote law and policy initiatives. Whether students go on to governmental or nongovernmental service, academia, or the private sector, they must have a keen perspective on the types of research and initiatives on laws and policies that contribute to effective public health solutions. Understanding which legal initiatives exist — and how to measure their impact — is a first step to gaining this perspective.
The resources listed here are intended to supplement our free online Public Health Law Academy training series, Legal Epidemiology, and to guide students in developing legal epidemiology competencies.
Foundational materials
- The transdisciplinary approach to public health law. A framework for public health law research and practice that highlights core needs and gaps in the field
- A case for the application of policy surveillance to governmental public health research and practice
Trainings
- Training modules on policy surveillance methods. A learning library with detailed instructions, slides, and resources on policy surveillance
Resources
- A Scan of CDC Legal Epidemiology Publications. A report summarizing the findings from a scan of the EndNote library maintained for Science Clips (publications by CDC authors) from January 2011 to May 2015, identifying 225 articles in the realm of legal epidemiology, comprising 158 scientific evaluations and 67 commentaries or other forms of non-empirical legal scholarship
- Policy surveillance resources, with the following highlights:
- A technical guide for policy surveillance. This resource describes the standards and methods for conducting policy surveillance. It provides guidance for scoping, coding, publishing, updating, and validating legal data.
- Standards for policy surveillance. This article captures the results of a Delphi study that reached consensus on a set of core standards for collecting, analyzing, publishing, and maintaining legal datasets that monitor important public health initiatives.
- A complete scan of policies related to public health initiatives. Legal and policy initiatives on topics of public health interest identified by federal agencies and partners
- Learning opportunities: CDC’s Public Health Law Program Internships and Externships