What Gets Measured, Gets Changed
Does law matter regarding public health outcomes? Regardless of what one may think about the answer to this age-old question, in recent years the public health community has increasingly demonstrated and recognized the roles that public health laws and policies play in effectuating long-lasting and broad-based population-wide changes.
Public health laws and policies have been instrumental in the following ways: reducing smoking prevalence; reducing underage alcohol-related drinking, driving, crashes and fatalities; reducing exposure to second-hand smoke; eliminating vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP); increasing seat-belt use and reducing traffic fatalities; reducing dental carries; and reducing access to and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages sold in schools, and to reductions in caloric intake and overweight. In fact, in a review of the 10 greatest public health achievements in the 20th century, all were influenced by policy change.
Preface: Connecting Public Health Law, Practice, Policy, and Research
- 1. Lawyers, Guns, and Money
- 2. Making the Case for Laws that Improve Health
- 3. What Gets Measured, Gets Changed
- 4. Health in All Policies
- 5. The Potential of Shared Decision Making to Reduce Health Disparities
- 6. Environmental Public Health Law
- 7. State Boards of Health
- 8. Policy Issues in American Indian Health Governance
- 9. Global Public Health Legal Responses to H1N1
- 10. Public Health Preparedness Laws and Policies
- 11. Protecting the Mental Health of First Responders
- 12. Five Legal Preparedness Challenges for Responding to Future Public Health Emergencies
- 13. Implementing Health Reform at the State Level
- 14. Meaningful Use and Certification of Health Information Technology
- 15. Right to Health Litigation and HIV/AIDS Policy
- 16. The Role of Federal Preemption in Injury Prevention Litigation
- 17. Regulating Food Retail for Obesity Prevention
- 18. Pursuing Health Equity
- 19. The Michigan BioTrust for Health
- 20. Becoming the Standard