Projects investigating the impacts of law on traffic accidents, and the health and wellness of HIV-positive patients, people with mental illness, and children will be supported through dissertation grants provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Public Health Law Research (PHLR) program as part of its new Strategic and Targeted Research Program (STRP).
The dissertation grants will support students in accredited doctoral degree programs whose research interests require the use of public health law research methods. (See description for each of the final studies below.)
Students were asked to submit proposals for qualitative or quantitative studies of the health effects of specific laws or regulations and/or related underlying mechanisms of effect, or mapping studies that creates a multi-jurisdictional dataset of laws suitable for quantitative research.
PHLR’s aim is to promote the effective use of law to improve public health. Established in 2009, the program has now funded more than 70 studies and several reviews of existing scientific evidence on major public health challenges. STRP is its newest initiative. The STRP funding mechanism invited policy-makers, practitioners, researchers, and other public health law stakeholders to identify areas they felt lacked an evidence-base.
“Through this dissertation grant program, we are aiming to support the upcoming generation of public health law researchers, encouraging their use of PHLR methods and interaction with a broader network of public health law researchers,” said Scott Burris, professor of law at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he also directs the Center for Health Policy, Law, and Practice and the Public Health Law Research program.
The grantees will have access to technical assistance from PHLR’s network of content and methodological experts, and will have the opportunity to share their research progress and network at the PHLR 2014 Annual Meeting.