News
and Updates
 January 25, 2008 - Together with the CDC Division of Adolescent and School Health and Public Health Law Program, the Center is pleased to announce the availability of the Report entitled “A CDC Review of School Laws and Policies Concerning Child and Adolescent Health” which is now published as a Special Issue of the Journal of School Health (Volume 78), February 2008. Using the coordinated school health program model as a framework, the Report examines laws and policies concerning the health of children and adolescents in schools. It is intended to help practitioners and policymakers in public health and education at the federal, state, and local levels enhance their knowledge of relevant laws and policies.
January 18, 2008 - Together with the CDC Public Health Law Program, the Center is pleased to announce the publication of the official proceedings of the 2007 National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness: The National Action Agenda for Public Health Legal Preparedness, as a special supplement of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics. This issue features the contributions of multiple Center colleagues, including James G. Hodge, Jr., Executive Director, and Senior Scholars, Kristine Gebbie and David Fidler.
January 1, 2008 - As a CDC collaborating center for public health law pursuant to a cooperative, multiyear agreement with CDC's Public Health Law Program, the Center is pleased to participate in the CDC/ASLME 2007 National Summit on Obesity Prevention in June, 2008 in Atlanta, GA. Invited participants plan to focus on various legal interventions to address obesity in the United States and internationally.
December 12, 2007 - The Center is pleased to announce the publication of a Symposium Issue on Global Health Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. This Symposium issue of the Journal brings together established and emerging scholars from across the globe to present their views and insights on a range of topics concerning global health law, ethics, and policy. Multiple Center colleagues contributed to this issue, including co-editors Lawrence O. Gostin, Director, and James G. Hodge, Jr., Executive Director. Additional Center colleagues contributed as well, including Stephen P. Teret, Director; Jon Vernick, Associate Director; Senior Fellow Lainie Rutkow; Senior Scholars Peter Jacobson, David Fidler, and Sara Rosenbaum, and Scholar Lance Gable.
September 19, 2007 - The Center has been awarded a CDC grant to serve as a “CDC Collaborating Center for Public Health Legal Preparedness,” beginning October 1, 2007. This five-year award, made through CDC’s Public Health Law Program, supports the Center's work on three primary goals to (1) develop information on public health legal preparedness through original research and analysis, (2) disseminate information to target audiences for their use in improving public health legal preparedness, and (3) develop and disseminate related training and learning materials.
September 12, 2007 - Together with authors from the World Bank (Katharina Gamharter and Rudolph Van Puymbroeck), Center colleagues Lance Gable, Lawrence O. Gostin, and James G. Hodge, Jr., have published their book, Legal Aspects of HIV/AIDS: A Guide for Policy and Law Reform. This text summarizes key legal and policy issues for 65 wide-ranging topics related to HIV/AIDS in a concise format useful for policy makers, HIV/AIDS practitioners, lawyers, the media and others seeking clear, precise information. The Guide provides relevant “practice examples” (citing from actual laws and regulations globally) and offers selective lists of references.
August 15, 2007 - For information and the most current updates of state legislative activity related to the Turning Point Model State Public Health Act [as of 8/15/07] and the Center's Model State Emergency Health Powers Act [as of 7/15/06], click here.
August 2, 2007 - Working with Center Executive Director, James G. Hodge, Jr., JD, LLM, and others, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) has recently approved 2 new sections on civil liability protections and workers' compensation benefits for volunteers as part of its Uniform Emergency Volunteer Health Practitioners Act (with Commentary) during its 2007 annual conference. For more information, please link here.
April 15, 2007 - The Center is pleased to announce that Lawrence O. Gostin, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, and Center Director, has been named the O'Neill Professor of Global Health Law as part of the creation of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
February 22, 2007 - the Center presented its findings from its CDC-funded project, Assessing Legal Preparedness for School Closure in Response to Pandemic Flu or other Emergencies, at the 2007 Local, State, and Federal Public Health Preparedness Summit. For more information, including a link to the Center's Powerpoint presentation, please link here.
Additional Updates
The Center and CDC's Division of STD Prevention, National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, released their comprehensive analyses of the Legal Status of Expedited Partner Therapies (across jurisdictions). EPT involves the direct delivery of medications or prescriptions by persons infected with certain STDs to their at risk sexual partners. For more information, please link here.
The Center celebrated its WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center status with a scholarly event at Georgetown University Law Center. PAHO Director General Dr. Mirta Roses Periago addressed the assemblage. Also featured were special presentations on HIV/AIDS and human rights by Dr. Chris Beyrer, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights, and panel presentations by Center scholars, Professors David Fidler and Scott Burris, and Javier Vasquez, Human Rights Specialist, PAHO.
Coinciding with CDC's recent Revised Recommendations for HIV Testing of Adults, Adolescents, and Pregnant Women in Health-Care Settings, the Center has released for public dissemination its Report, Advancing HIV Prevention Initiative - A Limited Legal Analysis of State HIV Statutes, prepared in September 2004 for CDC. This document provides an analyses of key statutory provisions affecting HIV prevention in the United States (as of 2004). To access a PDF copy of the Report, click here.
The most current draft of the ESAR-VHP Legal and Regulatory Issues Report, developed for ASPR by the Center, is available online in PDF format. This Report addresses key legal and regulatory issues concerning the deployment and use of volunteer healthcare practitioners for all 50 states. It also includes multiple informative tables. For more information and links to the Report as well as the Center's ESAR-VHP Advanced Tool Kit, click here.
Beginning in the 2007-2008 academic year, Georgetown University Law Center is offering a Masters of Laws (LL.M.) Program in Global Health Law. This innovative Masters course of study under the direction of Lawrence O. Gostin is open to highly qualified candidates in public and private sectors with their J.D. (or a first degree in law from outside the United States) and strong interests or backgrounds in global and domestic health laws and policies.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health seeks to bridge the international work of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in a coordinated worldwide effort to combat threats to health—especially in developing countries.
Participants at the
leadership summit on Legal and Ethical Issues on the Front Lines of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response, co-hosted by the Center with the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness and the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, have produced a working draft of their Principles of Law and Ethics to Guide Allocation Decisions Involving Scarce Resources in Public Health Emergencies.
Editions of the Center's newsletter, Center Insights are available online. These newsletters provide articles, select public health law updates, and information about the Center and its personnel. For PDF copies of the current and former issues, click here.
Brief Background
Guided by a diverse group of faculty, scholars, fellows, and national
collaborative partners, and with additional funding support from
the Department of Health and Human Services and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center seeks to enhance the visibility and effectiveness
of law as a tool for the promotion of the public's health by: |
