Network for Public Health Law

06/02/2026

𝙇𝙖𝙬 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙋𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙮 𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙍𝙚𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝 𝙍𝙞𝙨𝙠𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙩

The recently released Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics supplemental issue features articles authored by presenters at the 2025 Public Health Law Conference in Seattle, Washington. Betsy Lawton, Network Deputy Director, Climate and Health, was among the authors of the article: “It’s Getting Hot Out There: The Need for and Development of Law and Policy Strategies to Reduce Health Risks of Extreme Heat.” In this Q&A, Betsy discusses the article and how it addresses a critical public health issue.

🔗 Our latest article, here:

The recently released Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics supplemental issue features articles authored by presenters at the 2025 Public Health Law Conference in Seattle, Washington. Betsy Lawton, Network Deputy Director, Climate and Health, was among the authors of the article: “It’s Getting Hot ...

05/28/2026

𝗣𝗹𝘂𝗴-𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗥𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆

In the face of rising energy costs and a strained electrical grid, policy-makers are eager for strategies to lower the energy burden for their constituents, including both homeowners and renters. Increasing access to plug-in (or balcony) solar by passing laws that address barriers to their use has become increasingly common in states across the U.S.

🔗 Our latest article, by Director of Climate and Health, Jill Krueger, JD, here:

In the face of rising energy costs and a strained electrical grid, policy-makers are eager for strategies to lower the energy burden for their constituents, including both homeowners and renters. Increasing access to plug-in (or balcony) solar by passing laws that address barriers to their use has b...

04/16/2026

Public health doesn't advance in silos.

The 2025 Public Health Law Conference theme, 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺., acknowledged this, and brought together public health practitioners, leaders, and advocates tackling one of the field's most pressing realities: that meaningful progress depends on how well we work together to leverage law and policy.

Now, some of the critical topics discussed at the conference have been published in a special symposium of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

🔗 Read the open-access articles here:

Cambridge Core - Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics - Volume 54 - 2025 Public Health Law Conference: Connection. Collaboration. Community.

04/08/2026

For National Public Health Week, we want to recognize the public health professionals, policymakers, and advocates who use law and policy every day to make communities healthier and more equitable.

The Network for Public Health Law offers free legal technical assistance; resources including issue and policy briefs, factsheets, and toolkits; and trainings to support that work. Community organizations, health departments, and policymakers can get evidence-based, actionable guidance on the legal and policy questions that shape what they are actually able to do across data sharing, public health authority, harm reduction, housing policy, climate health, and more.

Ready to put public health law to work for your community? Reach out here:

What We Do As knowledgeable, trained issue-spotters, we help public health professionals and community groups identify legal and policy solutions that will advance their objectives as well as those that could impede their efforts. We help them understand regulations, access laws, develop policy and....

03/20/2026

Post-Dobbs, the United States has seen an onslaught of attacks on abortion care. Legal strategies grounded in “parental rights” and “prenatal personhood” are increasingly common and pose a particular threat to women, girls, and pregnant people’s lives, health, and well-being.

Wendy Heipt, J.D., is a human rights attorney who currently serves as senior reproductive justice counsel at Legal Voice, an organization advancing the rights of women and LGBTQ people. She was among the presenters on the Network’s recent webinar, "Beyond Borders: Global Legal Innovations for Countering “Parental Rights” and “Prenatal Personhood” in the U.S. Abortion Context. That panel discussed the onslaught of attacks on abortion care that the U.S. has seen post-Dobbs, including those grounded in “parental rights” and “prenatal personhood.” At the panel, Wendy discussed the increasing efforts to establish legal personhood for prenatal life in the United States, which is becoming an outlier in this area on the world stage.

In this Q & A, Wendy outlines what fetal personhood is, how it can become established in law, and why it is a threat to reproductive health and equity. She is also a co-author of a recently published article in the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice titled: “Fetal Personhood Creep: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters.”

Read the Q & A, here:

HDUs can provide health departments critical information to respond proactively to emergencies, public health risks, and equity focused use cases. They also address many contemporary concerns around data sharing, such as transparency around governance and ensuring the access and use of data serves t...

03/06/2026

The public health implications of federal executive orders don't pause between news cycles, so we built a dashboard to help practitioners keep up.

Our Executive Order tracker follows key 2025 EOs with significant public health consequences, searchable by topic(s), and with plain-language public health impact summaries for each order.

🔗 Read the full analysis, here: https://www.networkforphl.org/news-insights/tracking-the-public-health-impacts-of-federal-executive-orders/

🔗 Access the tracker, here: https://www.networkforphl.org/EO-Tracker.html

Drug checking services have been shown to reduce the risk of overdose by providing people with information on what is in drugs bought outside of pharmacies. State drug paraphernalia laws can limit access to drug checking initiatives by prohibiting possessing or distributing anything used for “test...

02/26/2026

𝘾𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙎𝙪𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙖𝙬𝙨: 𝙃𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙁𝙤𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙡 𝙁𝙪𝙚𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝 𝘾𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 ​ ​
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States burdened with the costs of mitigating and responding to the effects of climate change have looked to a decades old federal law as a model for allocating those costs to the industries that emit the greenhouse gases that fuel climate change. The laws, called Climate Superfund Laws, or Make Polluters Pay, are being considered across the county.
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🔗 Read out latest article, by Deputy Director, Climate and Health, Betsy Lawton, J.D., here:

Drug checking services have been shown to reduce the risk of overdose by providing people with information on what is in drugs bought outside of pharmacies. State drug paraphernalia laws can limit access to drug checking initiatives by prohibiting possessing or distributing anything used for “test...

02/23/2026

𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝗟𝗮𝘄𝘀
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Maintaining the privacy of reproductive health information is critical for ensuring access to care, promoting open communication with providers, and preventing harm like stigma, harassment, and criminalization. Under the Biden Administration, the federal government sought to protect reproductive health privacy by issuing a new rule under HIPAA with additional protections, but this rule was eliminated by a federal court in 2025. This issue brief aims to support policymakers and others considering enactment of state-level protections to safeguard reproductive privacy in response to the elimination of these federal protections. To that end, it describes the federal protections that are no longer in effect and identifies HIPAA provisions that could leave reproductive health information vulnerable to punitive use and disclosure. It then provides a general overview of privacy-related state shield laws, analyzes how they relate to the eliminated federal protections , and identifies considerations for enactment of additional protections, providing state law examples for others to draw from. ​ ​
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🔗 Read our latest article, by Mid-States Attorney, Emma Kaeser, JD, here:

Maintaining the privacy of reproductive health information is critical for ensuring access to care, promoting open communication with providers, and preventing harm like stigma, harassment, and criminalization. This issue brief aims to support policymakers and others considering enactment of additio...

02/17/2026

We’re excited to connect with so many of you this week for our upcoming webinar, "Beyond Borders: Global Legal Innovations for Countering “Parental Rights” and “Prenatal Personhood” in the U.S. Abortion Context."

🔗 If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time:

Post-Dobbs, the United States has seen an onslaught of attacks on abortion care. Legal strategies grounded in “parental rights” and “prenatal personhood” are increasingly common and pose a particular threat to women, girls, and pregnant people’s lives, health, and well-being. Advocates and...

01/30/2026

The Network's Harm Reduction team has published a new open-access article in the International Journal of Drug Policy, called: 𝘈 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘨 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴.
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Highlights:
• Lack of access to safer use equipment causes bacterial and viral infections.
• Legal restrictions on access to safer use equipment is not evidence-based.
• Laws restricting safer use equipment remain widespread in the United States.
• There is large variation in laws governing access to drug use equipment.
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Authors: Corey S. Davis, JD, Director, Harm Reduction; Amy Judd Lieberman, JD, Deputy Director, Harm Reduction; Ashleigh Dennis, JD, Senior Attorney, Harm Reduction; and Michael Abrams, JD, Senior Attorney, Harm Reduction; and Czarina Behrends, PhD, Assistant Professor of Healthcare Policy and Research, Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University
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👉 Read the full article here: