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CLEH conducts rigorous interdisciplinary research that explores how the law affects the nation’s two health systems. The primary research goal is to address issues of importance to practitioners in both health systems. The research agenda engages new issues and ideas to inform public health and health care practice and policy. Projects currently underway examine governance issues, the impact of regulation on health care delivery, and the organization of the public health system. Through its research agenda, the Center expects to discover potential synergies across the two systems that might not be apparent when looking at one system alone.
Practice
Center activities translate research into tools that enhance strategic decision-making among public health and health care practitioners. The Center provides an important venue for communication among attorneys, physicians, and practitioner communities to discuss solutions to specific problems regarding law and the health systems. Workshops, conferences, and an annual lecture series in honor of Professor Arthur Southwick— who wrote the seminal text on law and health care administration—will engage health care and public health practitioners and their attorneys.
Policy
CLEH believes that empirical research contributes to the development of sound legal doctrine and effective legislative and regulatory health policy. Center activities transfer research and knowledge to assist policymakers in addressing the challenges facing the health systems and to improve health services outcomes. CLEH will issue periodic policy briefs on important law and health systems topics, present policy recommendations to state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, publish findings in leading journals and newspapers, and present findings at various professional forums.
Ethics
The Center examines issues involving public health ethics, an emerging area of inquiry focusing on the ethical implications in population health practice and policy. Public health policymakers and practitioners face unique ethical concerns because their use of the government’s coercive powers to improve the population’s health may limit an individual’s freedom. In formulating and implementing public health policy, it is important to assess the potential intersections and differences between legal and ethical analyses of public health issues. Center activities will make explicit the ethical implications of public health policy and practice.
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