PHLP has released version three of the Public Health Emergency Law and Forensic
Epidemiology training materials on CD-ROM. Please click on the banner
above for more information.
Public Health Grand Rounds
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Public Health Emergency
Legal Preparedness Clearinghouse
The resources below are selected tools developed by the CDC Public Health Law Program
and partners for professionals' and policy makers' use in strengthening their
organizations’ and jurisdictions’ legal preparedness for all-hazards public health emergencies.
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Cross-Sector Collaboration
Tools
The CDC / Bureau of Justice Assistance "Public Health and Law Enforcement Emergency Preparedness Workgroup" has released two tools designed to improve cross-sectoral and cross-jurisdictional preparedness for public health emergencies. The first, “A Framework for Improving Cross-Sector Coordination for Emergency Preparedness and Response: Action Steps for Public Health, Law Enforcement, Corrections, and the Judiciary,” details background on and
opportunities for strengthening cross-sectoral and cross-jurisdictional emergency preparedness. The second is a guide for developing a memorandum of understanding for coordinated cross-sector implementation of community response measures to contagious respiratory diseases such as influenza.
More information and available documents Dismissal of School Children
in the Context of Pandemic Influenza
In response to national pandemic preparedness priorities, CDC commissioned
the independent Centers for Law and the Public's Health: A Collaborative
at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities to review the state-level legal
framework for reducing the density of school classrooms, with specific focus
on closure of schools, as a social distancing or social mitigation measure
to slow the spread of an H5N1 influenza pandemic or similar highly contagious
infectious disease. The Centers’ researchers restricted their scope of inquiry
to laws adopted at the state level and to laws that expressly address school
closure. (The study did not address any relevant laws adopted at the local
level, nor did it address any relevant general laws.) The Centers’ report
Legal Preparedness for School Closures in Response to Pandemic Influenza
and Other Emergencies presents a summary description of the express
state laws reviewed by the researchers as of late 2006, together with the
authors' observations about those laws (click
here to view the report). The report is also accessible on the federal
government's comprehensive pandemic influenza website (http://www.pandemicinfluenza.gov)
and on the Centers' website (http://www.publichealthlaw.net).
In the News
Iowa schools stretch to meet nursing law
Des Moines Register (11/10/08) Staci Hupp
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081110/NEWS02/811100338/1001/
Dozens of school districts in Iowa are scrambling to meet the
requirements of a 2007 law making school nurses mandatory. According to
state records, at least 38 small school districts have no registered
nurses on staff. The average salary for a registered nurse in Iowa is
more than $35,000 a year -- a price many rural districts cannot afford.
"There seems to be a shortage of [nurses] in all areas right now, and
they could earn a pretty good wage going to the hospitals or clinics.
How does the school compete with that?" asked Rick Pederson,
superintendent of the Sumner and Fredericksburg school districts. The
law does not specify a minimum number of hours per week the nurse must
work, and some districts have gotten creative about meeting the
requirement.
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