News

Nine in 10 primary care physicians say that prescription drug abuse is a moderate or big problem in their communities and nearly half say they are less likely to prescribe opioids to treat pain compared to a year ago, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

Scott Burris, JD has been named the first recipient of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Law Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Health Law. Burris and his accomplishments will be recognized at the annual Law Section reception on Monday, November 17, 2014 at the APHA Annual Meeting being held in New Orleans.

A new study released on October 16 in the American Journal of Public Health finds that young men in New York City who report they’ve been stopped and questioned by police are also reporting higher levels of trauma and stress associated with those experiences, particularly when they report that the encounters were intrusive. The study finds that men who experienced the most intrusive encounters — those interactions that were aggressive, deemed unfair, or involved racially-charged language — also experienced the most significant symptoms, but the researchers also report stress, trauma and anxiety in men who had experienced even minimal interactions with the police. The study also finds disparities across race: black respondents experienced trauma symptoms at a higher frequency than other races.

A new map by the Public Health Law Research Program charts the changes in the federal and state minimum wage laws dating back to 1980.

Since establishing a standard minimum wage rate for qualified employees in 1938, the federal minimum wage has been increased 22 times – from 25 cents per hour to the current rate of $7.25, which was established in July 2009. The current rate equates to roughly $15,000 per year for a 40-hour work week.