CDC's Public Health Law Program

The Public Health Law Program (PHLP) leads CDC's work on public health law. Jeffrey Koplan, then director of CDC, set it up in 2000 after consulting CDC programs and outside partners. It now sits in CDC's National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce.

Why law

Law is a tool for protecting and improving the public's health, and it is the foundation of much of what government public health agencies do. Many of public health's greatest successes relied heavily on it:

• high childhood immunisation rates
• safer motor vehicles
• safer workplaces
• less tooth decay

Law plays a growing part against newer threats too: childhood obesity, infections picked up in healthcare, motor vehicle injuries and prescription drug overdoses.

What the program does

PHLP develops legal tools and gives legal technical assistance to public health practitioners and policymakers in state, tribal, local and territorial (STLT) jurisdictions. With health departments and other partners it:

• identifies public health law priorities
• researches laws that affect the public's health
• analyses public health legal preparedness
• compares laws across jurisdictions
• prepares guidance, articles, reports and toolkits
• develops and shares curricula on public health law

Contact and study

• Ask PHLP for more information.
• Students can earn academic credit while learning how law protects the public's health: educational opportunities.

Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "About the Public Health Law Program." https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/about/index.html
• A stock photograph of three people in a library is not reproduced here.