Initiatives

The Centers for Law and the Public's Health and its personnel are involved in a number of initiatives, projects, conferences, and events, as selectively summarized below.

For additional information about the varied efforts of the Centers and its personnel, please see prior editions of the Centers' newsletter, Center Insights. These newsletters provide articles, updates, and information about public health law and other interests of the Centers and its personnel. To review indexes from each newsletter and obtain PDF copies, click here.

• The Centers' publication of a Symposium Issue on Global Health Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics is now available online. This Symposium issue of the Journal brought together established and emerging scholars from across the globe to present their views and insights on a range of topics concerning global health law, ethics, and policy.  Multiple Centers colleagues contributed to this issue, including co-editors Lawrence O. Gostin, Director, and James G. Hodge, Jr., Executive Director. Additional Center colleagues published their scholarly articles in this issue, including Stephen P. Teret, Director; Jon Vernick, Associate Director; Lainie Rutkow, Senior Fellow; Senior Scholars Peter Jacobson,  David Fidler, and Sara Rosenbaum, and Scholar Lance Gable.
• The Centers has been awarded a CDC grant to serve as a “CDC Collaborating Center for Public Health Legal Preparedness,” beginning October 1, 2007. This five-year award, made through CDC’s Public Health Law Program, supports the Center's work to (1) develop information on public health legal preparedness through original research and analysis, (2) disseminate information to target audiences for their use in improving public health legal preparedness, and (3) develop and disseminate related training and learning materials.
• Together with authors from the World Bank (Katharina Gamharter and Rudolph Van Puymbroeck), Center colleagues Lance Gable, Lawrence O. Gostin, and James G. Hodge, Jr., have published their book, Legal Aspects of HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Policy and Law Reform. This text summarizes key legal and policy issues for 65 wide-ranging topics related to HIV/AIDS in a concise format useful for policy makers, HIV/AIDS practitioners, lawyers, the media and others seeking clear, precise information.  The Guide provides relevant “practice examples” (citing from actual laws and regulations globally) and offers selective lists of references.  
• For information and the most current updates of state legislative activity related to the Turning Point Model State Public Health Act [as of 8/15/07] and the Center's Model State Emergency Health Powers Act [as of 7/15/06], click here.
• Working with Centers Executive Director, James G. Hodge, Jr., JD, LLM, and others, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) has recently approved 2 new sections on civil liability protections and workers' compensation benefits for volunteers as part of its Uniform Emergency Volunteer Health Practitioners Act (with Commentary) during its 2007 annual conference. For more information, please link here.
• The Centers presented its findings from its CDC-funded project, Assessing Legal Preparedness for School Closure in Response to Pandemic Flu or other Emergencies, at the 2007 Local, State, and Federal Public Health Preparedness Summit on February 22, 2007. For more information, including a link to the Center's Powerpoint presentation, please link here
• The Centers and CDC's Division of STD Prevention, National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, released their comprehensive analyses of the Legal Status of Expedited Partner Therapies (across jurisdictions). EPT involves the direct delivery of medications or prescriptions by persons infected with certain STDs to their at risk sexual partners. For more information, please link here.
• The Centers celebrated its WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center status with a scholarly event at Georgetown University Law Center. PAHO Director General Dr. Mirta Roses Periago addressed the assemblage. Also featured were special presentations on HIV/AIDS and human rights by Dr. Chris Beyrer, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights, and panel presentations by Centers Senior Scholars, Professors David Fidler and Scott Burris, and Javier Vasquez, Human Rights Specialist, PAHO. For more information, please link here.
• Coinciding with CDC's recent Revised Recommendations for HIV Testing of Adults, Adolescents, and Pregnant Women in Health-Care Settings, the Centers has released for public dissemination its Report, Advancing HIV Prevention Initiative - A Limited Legal Analysis of State HIV Statutes, prepared in September 2004 for CDC. This document provides an analyses of key statutory provisions affecting HIV prevention in the United States (as of 2004). To access a PDF copy of the Report, click here.
• The most current draft of the ESAR-VHP Legal and Regulatory Issues Report, developed for ASPR by the Centers, is available online in PDF format. This Report addresses key legal and regulatory issues concerning the deployment and use of volunteer healthcare practitioners for all 50 states. It also includes multiple informative tables. For more information and links to the Report as well as the Centers' ESAR-VHP Advanced Tool Kit, click here.
• Participants at the leadership summit on Legal and Ethical Issues on the Front Lines of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response, co-hosted by the Centers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, have produced a working draft of their Principles of Law and Ethics to Guide Allocation Decisions Involving Scarce Resources in Public Health Emergencies.