Ross D. Silverman et al APHA 2020 Annual Meeting Roundtable - All Public Health (Law) Is Local
Channel: Ross Silverman
Date: 2020-10-26

This presentation was made for the 2020 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting Roundtable on Using Empirical Research Methods in Assessing Public Health Laws, October 27, 2020. 

Policy surveillance is critical to examining the ways law functions as a structural and social determinant of health. To date, little policy surveillance research has focused on examining intrastate variations in the structure and health impact of laws. Intrastate policy surveillance poses unique methodological challenges due to the complex legal architecture within states and inefficient curation of local laws. We discuss our experience with these challenges of intrastate policy surveillance in Indiana: a state with 92 counties and several populous cities; a complicated history of home rule; systemically underfunded local governments; and variations in demography, geography, and technology adoption. In our case study (the Health IN Law Project), we required significant time and resources to obtain county and city ordinances through online code libraries, jurisdiction websites, and (most notably) physically visiting offices to scan documents ourselves. A concerted effort is needed to ensure local laws of all kinds are stored online in organized, searchable, and open-access systems. Such an effort is vital to achieve the aspirational goals of policy surveillance at the intrastate level.