Category Archives: Conferences
Public Health Law Conference 2012: Practical Approaches to Critical Challenges
The Network for Public Health Law will sponsor the 2012 Public Health Law Conference, with the theme “Practical Approaches to Critical Challenges,” from October 10 through 12, 2012, in Atlanta. Follow NewPublicHealth during the conference for interviews and session updates. Goals of the conference include:
- Examining practical legal approaches to address priority public health issues
- Learning about helpful public health law resources and evidence-based research
- Discussing public health legal questions and answers
- Building partnerships to accomplish public health objectives and foster innovation
According to the Network, target audiences for the conference include attorneys, local, state, tribal and federal public health officials and practitioners, policy-makers, advocates and academics and researchers.
NewPublicHealth spoke with Dan Stier, director of the Network for Public Health Law about the Network’s accomplishments since its founding two years ago, and upcoming goals.
>>BONUS: Read our earlier Q&A with Dan Stier, offering a sneak preview of what's to come at the 2012 Public Health Law Conference.
NewPublicHealth: How much has awareness of the Network grown since you launched in 2010?
Dan Stier: The volume of the requests has grown greatly, as have the complexity and timeliness of the requests. The fact that people are becoming increasingly aware of us means that we really are addressing issues in real time. Dramatic current examples include legal questions on public health services related to West Nile virus and Hurricane Isaac in real time.
>>Read an interview with James Hodge of the Network on legal questions on these and other recent public health crises.
Other requests include longer-term issues like shared services among local health departments. State and local health departments face budget cuts and so they are figuring out ways to do things more efficiently and economically, and oftentimes, that involves shared service agreements between local health departments. We’ve seen much more activity along those lines. More recently we’ve gotten an increasing number of questions on maternal and child health, particularly with respect to the provisions relating to children in the Affordable Care Act, so we now advertise that as another area of specialty.
NPH: How have people become aware of what the Network offers?
