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Understanding
the Role of Legal Frameworks |
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Author:
Alexander C. Wagenaar, PhD Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods, a new text published by Wiley, advances science by directly addressing the above limitations. Edited by Alex Wagenaar, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula and Scott Burris, a team of 23 distinguished scholars from a diverse set of public health and social science disciplines deliver a thorough primer addressing issues that arise specifically in legal epidemiology—the scientific study and deployment of law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and prevention of disease and injury in a population. Law is critical as a mechanism of influence on the public’s health, well-being, and equity. In shaping physical and social environments, and in shaping individual and social behaviors, law serves as a systemic intervention—one we saw clearly during the height of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Law can also serve as a barrier to systemic interventions, as we have seen with harm reduction efforts related to opioids. A holistic consideration of legal environment therefore is important for addressing the ongoing challenges around the social determinants of health and most other areas of research in epidemiology. Law is at the root of most major public health advances, and yet we have historically not paid sufficient attention to improving its scientific assessment.
The book’s first two chapters provide a framework for situating the field of legal epidemiology within the broader field of public health. Then six chapters lay out theories relevant for understanding mechanisms of legal effect from public health, sociology, criminology, social psychology, and economics, closing with a chapter integrating concepts and mechanisms from diverse disciplines. Part three of the book lays out specific practical steps for the measurement of legal variables, ensuring reliable and valid indicators required for high-quality scientific studies. The final major section of the book focuses on research design considerations that are central for making causal inferences concerning effects of law on the public’s health, including RCTs, controlled time-series trials and natural experiments, as well as qualitative and cost-benefit studies of public health policies. The text is particularly helpful to PhD students, post-docs, and career scientists interested in the social determinants of health, and studying effects of regulations, laws and other public policies on population-level health outcomes. Contents Foreword to the First Edition Michelle A. Larkin Forward to the Second Edition Sandro Galea Preface Editors: ALEXANDER C. WAGENAAR, PhD, is Research Professor at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida College of Medicine. ROSALIE LICCARDO PACULA, PhD, holds the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics & Law in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. SCOTT BURRIS, JD, is Professor of Law and Public Health at Temple University, where he directs the Center for Public Health Law Research, and Professor in Temple’s College of Public Health. PART ONE Frameworks for Legal Epidemiology
PART TWO Understanding How Law Influences Environments and Behavior
PART THREE Identifying and Measuring Legal Variables
PART FOUR Designing Legal Epidemiology Evaluations
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