141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

285843
Public health law research and injury control

Monday, November 4, 2013 : 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM

Paul Kuehnert, DNP, RN , Public Health Team, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ
Public health law has become a major tool of intervention to reduce morbidity and mortality due to injury and other causes. Public health law research has not been supported to a degree commensurate with the impact of law as an intervention tool. An overview of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiatives to support public health law and research. The Foundation has supported a coordinated set of initiatives to improve the identification, adoption and implementation of effective legal responses to public health threats. The first program in the initiative was the Public Health Law Research Program, started in 2009. It was joined a year later by the Network for Public Health Law, which provides technical assistance to health agencies and others using law to advance health goals. More recent elements of the program include fellowship programs for lawyers working on attorney general staffs, health law professors, and health department policy teams. These initiatives are helping increase acceptance and use of law as a public health tool.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related research
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Describe the purposes and extent of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s public health law initiative. Demonstrate the importance of multi-disciplinary research on public health law. Assess the current state of public health law research in injury control.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have served as county health officer and executive director for health in Kane County, Ill. I am a pediatric nurse practitioner and holds a Master of Science degree in public health nursing from University of Illinois at Chicago. I was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow in 2004.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.