One of the most popular trends in state legislatures from both sides of the isle is the adoption of food freedom laws — bills that exempt retailers from food safety regulations. This enables the sale of food products at farmers’ markets, on farms, from seaside docks, or even at retail outlets that are uninspected and could cause severe foodborne outbreaks. Neither state nor local public health officials can contain, inspect, or eliminate the sale of these foods. At the same time, in the United States, about 35 percent of food produced is wasted, with more than 100 million tons of food waste ge ..read more

There are many opportunities for the public health community to leverage AI to advance public health goals and health equity. AI also presents challenges for public health – including ethical and operational complexities. Many public health departments are unsure of how to navigate AI, struggling to understand how best to deploy it while protecting privacy and safeguarding against misuse. Join the Network for Public Health Law, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the Public Health Informatics Institute, and Dallas County Health and Human Services in a panel prese ..read more

Today, 74 percent of people living in the U.S. live in a state where cannabis has been legalized for either adult use (recreational) and/or medical use. While most cannabis policy development has occurred at the state level, the federal government is currently exploring impactful changes to federal cannabis law. Join the Network for Public Health Law and the Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy for a discussion focused on two significant areas of federal cannabis policy with critical public health implications: the rescheduling of cannabis and the regulation of intoxicating hemp-deri ..read more

The 2024 election has highlighted the differences in how people perceive and value our government, its role, and who it serves. How we navigate the post-election landscape will have a lasting impact on democracy, the social determinants of health, and public health authority. Join the Network for Public Health Law, Institute for Responsive Government—the new home of Healthy Democracy Healthy People, and Missouri Center for Public Health Excellence for a discussion about building systems that increase trust in government, and in turn, a healthy democracy that enables the public’s health to also ..read more

OVERVIEW Thursday, October 17, 2024 | 1:30 – 3:00 CT Public health officials and practitioners are generally tasked with protecting and promoting the public’s health. The public they serve are diverse in many ways and are unique both intra- and inter-jurisdictionally. Laws and policy ecosystems also vary from one jurisdiction to another. This makes one-size-fits-all solutions imperfect and requires tailored assistance to apply generally applicable public health principles to jurisdiction and population-specific situations. Still, the law provides a baseline for understanding and navigating the ..read more

Overview September 19, 2024 | 11:00am – 12:30pm CT Join us for a webinar introducing the Network’s Racial Equity Dataset. This searchable database includes bills proposed and enacted in the 2021 and 2022 legislative cycles in the wake of the renewed racial justice movement in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Features of the laws that were enacted, and that were still in effect on December 31, 2022, were compiled into a cohesive dataset, created using policy surveillance methods, to provide insight into the outcomes of those legislative sessions. Legislation identified, though not exhaustive, pr ..read more

Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 12 – 1:00 p.m. CT The Network seeks to support local, state, and tribal governments, health departments, community-based groups or organizations, nonprofits, professional associations, health care systems and providers, and others in their efforts to eliminate deep, systemic, and racially driven inequities in public health. Join us for a webinar outlining our recently released Legal and Policy Assistance to Address Racial Health Equity call for applications (RHE CFA) to support work on racial health equity. We are seeking applicants developing or working on a specif ..read more

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