In 1965, while signing the Voting Rights Act into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson stated that “a man without a vote is a man without protection.” However, voting is a bit more complicated this year as it can increase the chance of ...
To help break the chain of COVID-19 infections, state and local health departments are conducting disease investigations and contact tracing, core tools of public health practice used to combat the spread of communicable diseases. This ...
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states are using their emergency powers to authorize a variety of social distancing measures. This post is a summary of executive orders that have led to the closure of many businesses and nonprofit ...
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new challenges for screening children’s blood lead levels, as screening rates across the country dropped during stay-at-home orders. A substantive federal policy change and provisions in the Infrastructure ...
States and territories have broad powers to protect public health and safety, including powers to prevent and control the spread of communicable disease typically exercised by state and territorial health departments. This authority is an ...
Anticipating a rapid deployment of COVID-19 vaccines as they are authorized, the CDC developed COVID-19 Vaccination Program Operational Guidance in collaboration with state and local jurisdictions to outline how each jurisdiction will make ...
Vaccines are one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century, as well as some of the most powerful and cost-effective tools to prevent disease, disparities, disability, and death among children and adults. The COVID-19 ...
Reconciling the tension between public health and civil liberties is one of the most significant challenges of public health law and ethics. The Supreme Court of the United States historically upheld state authority to enact and enforce ...
As governments and private entities adopt COVID-19 vaccine protocols to protect health and safety, legal challenges are mounting. In some states, policymakers have proactively attempted to limit or prohibit adopting COVID-19 vaccine ...
Recent state laws and governor emergency orders prohibiting universal school mask protocols are complicating the implementation of CDC’s evidence-based guidance for COVID-19 mitigation measures for in-person school. Ten states have enacted ...
Data reveals that nearly one third of COVID-19 patients experience one or more post-COVID conditions that linger for weeks or months after infection. The cause, duration, and potential treatments for these conditions are still being ...
As the COVID-19 Delta variant surges across the country, public and private employers have started instituting COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and masking protocols for their employees. On July 29, 2021 the White House announced that all ...
This week might have marked the beginning of summer, but many policymakers and health officials have their eye on the upcoming school year and what that might mean in terms of getting students vaccinated against COVID-19. According to a ...
As the number of COVID-19 vaccinations grows, some states are looking at their vaccination rates to determine when to loosen measures that mitigate the spread of COVID-19, such as venue capacity limits, business closure times, and masking ...
As a truly historic year comes to an end, many public health policy issues received a considerable amount of attention in 2020. Subjects such as the pandemic that will live on in infamy, racial health disparities, and the future of the ...
Many pharmaceutical companies urgently began developing a COVID-19 vaccine earlier this year to reduce the spread of the virus as the threat of a pandemic loomed. Fast forward several months and millions of COVID-19 cases later, states and ...
Conditioning school attendance on student vaccinations is an evidence-based way of maintaining and increasing vaccine coverage. State law establishes school vaccination requirements which apply not only to public schools but often to ...
Many states have introduced bills to strengthen and increase access to these prenatal, delivery, and postpartum services, building a solid foundation of care for women who must navigate the healthcare system and make difficult decisions ...
As the response to COVID-19 transitions from response to recovery, advocacy efforts continue to intensify on Capitol Hill, to help shape negotiations on the fifth emergency supplemental package.