The Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law celebrated its 10th anniversary with a symposium, Friday, September 13, 2019, in Philadelphia.

Prominent legal scholars and legal epidemiologists focused their presentations on four topics that have been the focus of the Center’s work — reproductive rights, the pharmaceutical industry, city-level health policy, and the social determinants of health. Speakers explored the role of legal epidemiology in law reform, both for laws on the books and policies on the horizon.

Session 1 – Working for Health at the City Level

Cities have been functioning as laboratories for democracy in health policy. The legal landscape presents a dramatic mosaic of innovation, preemption and uncertain impact. This panel knits together both specific topical examples and approaches to city-level advocacy to explore where we have been and where we are going.

• Scott Burris, JD, CPHLR and Temple Law (Moderator)
• Shelley Hearne, CityHealth.org
• Geoff Mwaungulu, JD, MPH, National Association of City and County Health Officials
• Jennifer Wood, PhD, Temple University College of Liberal Arts
• Alex Jones, National League of Cities

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Session 2 – Reproductive Rights

Abortion care is an important part of women’s reproductive health, though it is often treated as a contraband service under the law. This panel assesses recent mappings of the country’s many legal restrictions on abortion, undertaken primarily by the Center’s Abortion Law Project, and discusses how such data can help legal researchers understand abortion law’s relationship to health outcomes.

• Lindsay Cloud, JD, Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research (Moderator)
• Rachel Rebouche, JD, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• Patty Skuster, JD, MPP, Ipas, Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Fellow
• David Cohen, JD, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
• Kelli Hall, PhD, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health

Keynote Address

Michelle Mello, JD, PhD, Professor of Law and Health Research and Policy, Stanford University

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Session 3 – Using Law to Address the Social Determinants of Health

Law is understood to structure social relations and institutions, and so is a mechanism that influences social determinants of health. It also is a means through which people are sorted to better or worse lives based on their social position. To what extent is law actually being studied and deployed to change social determinants? Where should it be going in the future?

• Evan Anderson, JD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Temple Law '07) (Moderator)
• Scott Burris, JD, Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research and the Beasley School of Law
• Katie Moran-McCabe, JD, Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research and the Beasley School of Law (Temple Law '08)
• Jennifer Karas Montez, PhD, Syracuse University Maxell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
• Kelli Komro, PhD, MPH, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health
• Wendy Parmet, JD, Northeastern University School of Law

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Session 4 – The Continuing Struggle to Harmonize Drug Law with Public Health Evidence and Practice

Drug law, policing and public health has been a chronic problem in the United States – and an abiding research focus of CPHLR. In this panel, experts from research and practice talk about where we are and where we are – or ought to be – going.

• Heidi Grunwald, PhD, Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research (Moderator)
• Nicolas Terry, LLM, Indiana University McKinney School of Law
• Leo Beletsky, JD, MPH, Northeastern University School of Law and Bouvé College of Health Sciences (Temple Law '08)
• Ronda Goldfein, Esq., AIDS Law Project of Philadelphia
• Evan Anderson, JD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Temple Law '07)
• Devin Reaves, MSW, CRS, Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Coalition

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Session 5 – Looking Forward and Charting the Course: The Next 10 Years of Legal Epidemiology (Group Discussion)

Jennifer Ibrahim, PhD, Temple University College of Public Health (Moderator)

Additional Resources

Temple Law Review, Volume 92, No. 4, Summer 2020 features six essays from presenters.