Public Health Law in a Nutshell

Author: Hodge, Jr., James G.
Edition: 5th
Copyright Date: 2025
  • Publication Date: November 5th, 2024
  • ISBN: 9798892092104
  • Subject: Clinics and Externships
  • Series: Nutshells
  • Type: Overviews
  • Description: Public Health Law in a Nutshell, 5th Edition provides a core assessment of the critical role of law in America to protect communal health. As examined throughout the text, the field of public health law encompasses constitutional powers, legislative authorities, and extensive regulations in promotion of public health and safety. It also features legally-supported efforts contravening these objectives, leading to underlying tensions and difficult balances. The 5th Edition of the Nutshell addresses public health law issues, broadly defined, within a modern framework undergirding law as a premier tool for improving health outcomes. Updated to reflect key developments through July 2024, the Nutshell’s 12 chapters and 150+ graphics, illustrations, and figures examine definitive legal issues and core public health powers to prevent and control communicable and chronic conditions, as well as limit avoidable injuries and deaths. Legal routes and options countering other public health threats, including tobacco and alcohol use, guns, vehicles, and defective products, are also explored. Later chapters of the Nutshell focus on key legal issues related to public health information surveillance and privacy, commercial speech regulation, the built environment, and emergency legal preparedness and response. Chapter 12 centers on the dynamic legal and policy issues implicated during the multi-year COVID-19 pandemic. A “nutshell like no other,” this edition is a go-to resource for legal or public health practitioners, law- and policy-makers, regulators, judges, and college or graduate students in schools of law, public health, medicine, or other disciplines seeking to comprehend these issues as part of their coursework or research interests.