We take pride in the transdisciplinary nature of our work at the Center for Public Health Law Research and welcome any opportunities to partner with organizations and individuals working to use law to improve the public’s health, wellbeing and equity.
Read on to learn how we can work together, or contact us directly at PHLR@temple.edu. We hope to hear from you!
Partnering to build legal mapping data and evaluate the impact of laws and policies on health
We will work with you to create empirical legal data that can be used in evaluation studies or in practice.
- Access our policy surveillance software, MonQcle, the premier tool for legal research adopted by more than 1,000 users worldwide, to build a policy surveillance dataset on your own or adopt one of our existing datasets to update and maintain.
- Visit LawAtlas.org to to download and explore legal data existing using our interactive visualizations on more than 120 public health law topics. See examples of our collaborative work, like the Promoting Health and Cost Control in States Initiative produced with the Trust for America's Health, the Local Inclusionary Zoning Laws produced with the Cook County Department of Health through our Local Cities project, our State Preemption Laws data produced with support from the National League of Cities, or our Abortion Law Project, which is a collaboration with major reproductive health organizations.
- Visit PDAPS.org to see more than 30 datasets specific to state laws related to prescription drug abuse.
- Visit CityHealth.org for a great example of how policy surveillance can be used to move the needle on improving health in cities. This project is a collaboration between the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, with data produced by our Center.
- Visit the Emergency Law Inventory, which uses scientific legal mapping to helps individuals navigate through over 1,800 disaster response laws enacted by the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, 8 territories and freely associated states, and the federal government. ELI gives clear, concise summaries of laws impacting disaster responders.
Training and technical assistance for legal epidemiology and policy surveillance
The Center offers a variety of training and educational resources to teach legal epidemiology methods, including policy surveillance.
- Enroll in our Global Certificate in Legal Epidemiology, a 16-hour certificate, self-guided non-credit program that provides a deeper understanding of the foundations of legal epidemiology and the transdisciplinary model of public health law.
- Earn a graduate certificate in public health law research at Temple University through the Center in association with the College of Public Health and the Beasley School of Law. This 12-credit, interprofessional program focuses on the scientific study of the effects of laws and legal practices on health. The certificate provides foundational training in public health law and related research methods with a specific focus on the evaluation of policies and laws.
- Explore our policy surveillance training modules, sign up for a live webinar, or register to attend our annual Policy Surveillance Institute. The Center's policy surveillance methods training program can be applied to any topic or level of policy to build empirical legal data. Our team will walk you through the steps of the process to get you started as you create policy surveillance data on your own.
- Access theory and methods resources that provide a foundation for the field and articulate best practices and methods for research.
Analyzing and understanding the impacts of law on health, well-being and equity
Our team partners with institutions to understand and evaluate existing evidence on a legal topic, build resources to track and analyze progress, and articulate policy recommendations to support action and better health faster.
Past partnerships have developed a novel method for identifying gaps in evidence on the health effects of abortion law, more than 100 policy recommendations and expert analysis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a systematic review of research evaluating the impact of the housing system on health equity, an analysis of preemption across 15 domains, and most recently, data tracking legislative efforts to limit authority of public health officials in response to emergencies.
Joining our Fellowship program or applying for a position at the Center
New and established researchers may join our team for a two-year fellowship program. Fellows gain access to our data and team’s expertise, our grants management and communications resources, as well as opportunities for mentorship and to network with other public health law researchers at Temple University and beyond.