A Court-Centered Strategy for Public Health
Professor Wendy Parmet
Photograph by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
To ensure public health is not undermined in the courts, Northeastern Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law (CHPL), as part of the Act for Public Health partnership, recently released a report, A Plan for Action: Protecting Public Health in the Courts, that calls for several critical action steps, including research, education and coordination with allies in organizing and drafting amicus briefs in cases with significant public health ramifications. The report also outlines additional specific recommendations for the public health law community and its allies.
“The public health law community must work together in this time of legal instability to enable the formulation of a new jurisprudence that offers a sensible measure of deference to public health officials and heeds the scientific and technical evidence upon which public health decisions are based,” said Professor Wendy E. Parmet, who serves as faculty director of CHPL. CHPL hosted Act for Public Health’s May 2024 convening, which resulted in this report.
Act for Public Health includes Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research, ChangeLab Solutions, the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Public Health Law Watch at CHPL, and the Network for Public Health Law.
The public health law community must work together in this time of legal instability to enable the formulation of a new jurisprudence that offers a sensible measure of deference to public health officials and heeds the scientific and technical evidence upon which public health decisions are based.
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