Grantee Research
Funded by competitive grants from Public Health Law Research, each independent “Grantee Research” project seeks to build the evidence for and strengthen the use of regulatory, legal and policy solutions to improve public health. PHLR is also interested in identifying and ameliorating laws and legal practices that unintentionally harm health. As public health practitioners, policy-makers and others consider how laws influence the public’s health, they need evidence to inform questions such as: How does law influence health and health behavior? Which laws have the greatest impact? Can current laws be made more effective through better enforcement, or do they require amendment?
In the United States, vaccinations against certain diseases are accepted as an important step in leading a healthy life and helping to keep other people from getting sick. It is not unusual to be required to show proof that you have had certain vaccinations before you are allowed to register for...
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). The revisions will help reduce the public health problems caused by unsafe or toxic levels of lead in drinking water. This study will help identify gaps in existing policies on...
State and local governments make important decisions about how resources and services—including public health services--are provided to citizens. Examples of these decisions include how much decision-making autonomy local governments are given by the state, or the powers of local boards of...
New drugs extend life and improve its quality. Drug patents provide an incentive to develop new drugs, but patented drugs are often expensive and they block the sale of inexpensive generic copies. Generic firms have grown active in challenging the validity of drug patents over the past two...
Dental erosion is a widespread and increasing problem. This study will answer the question of what law and legal practices impact the consumption and purchase in Central Appalachia of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and citric acid drinks (CADs) that adversely affect oral health. The study will...
Drug overdose deaths have surpassed traffic fatalities in Washington State and 15 other states. This study will examine the legal intent, implementation and outcomes of a new Washington state law to support intervening in drug overdoses. The law includes a Good Samaritan component that provides...
Consuming too much salt (sodium chloride) puts Americans at risk for high blood pressure, a leading cause of heart attack and stroke. In 2010, U.S. medical and lost productivity costs from high blood pressure alone were more than $76 billion. Researchers estimate that reducing sodium in...
This study examines the policies and structures of local and state health departments, and how they impact public health. The study will focus on the structural arrangements of the local boards of health (such as whether the boards of health are elected or appointed) and the level of state...
The aims of this study are to assess: (1) whether state reporting laws for novel H1N1 influenza and emerging infections impact the ability of public health to collect data elements on individual cases, (2) whether state reporting laws for novel H1N1 influenza and emerging infections impact the...
To maintain their tax-exempt status, federal and state governments require non-profit hospitals to provide benefits to the communities in which they reside. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is developing regulations that require these hospitals to provide more extensive information than...
Regulatory agencies established to protect the public all face a fundamental challenge: there are many more firms to inspect than there are government personnel to inspect them. For example, more than 50,000 Americans die each year from health and safety hazards at work, but the U.S....
While states have passed statutory rape laws for a variety of reasons, many of them have viewed these laws, in part, as a mechanism to reduce rates of teenage pregnancy. This project will explore whether statutory rape laws, and the way in which they are enforced, contribute to a reduction...
Assessing HPV mandates through a public health law lens, this study of the District of Columbia's HPV Mandate responds to the Public Health Law Research question regarding analysis of the impact of laws using a time series design and one or more health outcome datasets to assess the effect of...
Do unfunded mandates regarding banning use of hand held cell phones in Texas school zones result in greater savings or cost for municipalities? In response to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Public Health team question regarding variation in implementation of local/regional public health...
This project will evaluate the effectiveness of the establishment of the Lead Court in November 2002 in the City of Philadelphia under the Lead Abatement Strike Team Program of the Philadelphia of Public Health to determine if this type of innovative legal strategy was...
Hierarchy of Evidence
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Hierarchy of Evidence
The Public Health Law Research program is dedicated to building the evidence base for public health law. In pursuing this aim, we fund and conduct a diverse array of research activities ranging from formative efforts that identify important research questions to the generation of legal data sets to experiments employing various methodological designs.
As a service to policy-makers and other consumers of NPO research, we have organized our resources according to this hierarchy of evidence, which depicts levels of the scientific authority.
In general, resources higher up the pyramid are less susceptible to bias and therefore provide more robust evidence about the effects of public health laws. Experimental designs, for example, utilize randomization and double-blinding to reduce selection and measurement biases making them more powerful tools for understanding causal relationships than quasi-experimental and observational designs. At the top of our pyramid are studies that use systematic processes such as meta-analysis to assess a question in light of a body of primary studies that have examined it. At the bottom of our pyramid are foundational resources like legal datasets and papers setting out research agendas. The bulk of our resources are primary studies in the middle two levels.
While this hierarchy reflects judgments about the authority of various designs, it does not suggest that research employing a design from a higher level is always more scientifically authoritative than research conducted in a design from a lower level.
© RWJF 2013
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Public Health Law Research is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It is housed at the Temple University Beasley School of Law.