Have you ever wanted to see a list of the states that allow patients to use medical marijuana, and to read each state’s laws allowing this? Ever needed to know which states requires parental notification of a child’s traumatic brain injury? Hint, only 7 states required this as of May 2015, and California was not one of them.
You can find data and related atlases on public health laws on these topics and others such as state foodborne illness reporting, syringe distribution, and anti-bullying/cyberbullying in schools at LawAtlas.
This website provides a visual display of state-level public health laws. You can view the results as a map, chart, or report. It is a resource for researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and the public.
To start, click on Topics in the menu at the top of the page. Select the topic of interest to you, and then click Start Here, a blue box on the right side of the page. From here, select the specific aspect of the law that you wish to research. You can generate maps and tables that highlight selected features of a wide variety of laws.
These maps and tables are generated from policy surveillance datasets that are produced by PHLR staff, grantees and outside sources. If you are interested in the laws of one particular state, simply click on that state on the map to see what’s available. Or scroll down the page to see an overview of each state’s laws on your topic.
Policy Surveillance Reports are also available on this website providing prepared summaries of current laws. Click on Explore, then Reports from the menu at the top of the page to find these.
You can also view and download the underlying legal data, codebooks, and protocols. Just click on Explore, then Data from the menu at the top of the page. From here you can download the raw data itself as an Excel spreadsheet.
Key conceptual development and operational support for LawAtlas is provided by the staff at the Public Health Law Research (PHLR) national program office, along with Avialae, LLC and Temple University.
Public Health Law Research is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with direction and technical assistance provided by Temple University. PHLR promotes effective regulatory, legal and policy solutions to improve public health.