In this commentary for the American Journal of Public Health, Scott Burris calls on the public health community to support the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws, and to probe more deeply into why the United States and its citizens feels the need for these laws in the first place.
Roads in the United States are rarely developed with consideration for users other than motorists. This can result in dangerous conditions for pedestrians, bicyclists and users of public transit. Complete Streets policies seek to create safer roads by designing them to balance the needs and priorities of all users. These users typically include motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users. Complete Streets are often implemented through state or local transportation policies, state laws and regulations, or city ordinances.
This legal map presents statutes and regulations that authorize the involuntary commitment of substance users, in effect as of March 1, 2018. It catalogs the statutory standards authorizing commitment, parties authorized to petition for a commitment, provisions surrounding clinical assessments, parameters of judicial review, time periods for commitment authorization, allowable treatment, and procedures for recommitment.
Using data from LawAtlas and the High School Report Injury Online between the 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 academic years, the researchers examined the statistical association between the implementation of state laws addressing concussions and actual concussion rates in high school athletes reported by athletic trainers. The study focused on nine common high-school sports: boys’ football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and wrestling; and girls’ basketball, soccer, softball, and volleyball.
This study examined the consistency and variation in written high school policies addressing youth traumatic brain injuries (more commonly known as concussions) in relation to the three most common components of youth sports traumatic brain injury laws.
This study, published in Injury Epidemiology, finds that bullying victimization increased one year following the passage of an anti-bullying law in Iowa, possibly due to either improved reporting or over-identification, and did not start to go down until three years after the law was implemented.
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Caleb Alexander, MD, MS •
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
In the first year that two Florida laws aimed at curbing opioid prescriptions were in effect, the state's top opioid prescribers wrote significantly fewer prescriptions of this type of pain medication, according to a new study published June 2, 2016, in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
This article examines gun-related suicide and violent crime rates in people with serious mental illnesses, and whether legal restrictions on firearm sales to people with a history of mental health adjudication effectively prevent gun violence.
This Knowledge Asset includes information about the impacts of bullying; the public health framework for anti-bullying laws; the language and content of these laws; and current evaluation studies on the implementation and effectiveness of anti-bullying laws.
Workplace injuries remain a significant public health problem. In the U.S. there were 4,383 fatal workplace injuries in 2012, and an estimated 3.8 million nonfatal injuries. Approximately 49,000 deaths each year are attributed to workplace-related illnesses. A 2011 economic analysis found that workplace injuries and illnesses cost the United States $192 billion annually.
