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Theory and Methods Literature

The resources in this section explain the theory and scientific methods used to conduct research on the impact laws of laws and legal practices on public health, what we call public health law research or legal epidemiology.

The resources are designed to be useful both to experienced empirical researchers and to others who want to understand basic scientific concepts and methods. The four categories follow the stages of a project from the development of the research questions and design of the study, through the collection of data, to analysis. Many of the resources in this section are chapters from the book, Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods.

legal epidemiology theory and methods

Framing Public Health Law Research

The resources in this section focus on positioning public health law research in the broader context of public health science and the study of law. These resources define basic terms (like “law”), categorize the various forms of public health law research, and provide frameworks for understanding public health law and legal aspects of public health systems and services research.

Title Description
A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology This paper describes an emerging, transdisciplinary model of public health law that unites two traditions: scientific evaluation of the health effects of laws and legal practices.
Educated Guessing: Getting Researchers and Research Knowledge into Policy Innovation This paper presents a three-step process for developing legal interventions as well as observations and suggestions for how to think about legal innovation within the broader campaign for evidenced-based policy.
Legal Regulation of Health-Related Behavior: A Half-Century of Public Health Law Research This paper describes the rise of law as a tool of public health, and the scientific research that has assessed and often guided it, with a focus on five major domains: traffic safety, gun violence, tobacco use, reproductive health and obesity.
Making the Case for Laws That Improve Health: A Framework for Public Health Law Research This article defines the emerging scientific discipline of public health law research and explores the promise and challenges of studying the impact of laws on health.
Moving from Intersection to Integration: Public Health Law Research and Public Health Systems and Services Research This article sets out a unified framework and a shared research agenda for the fields of public health law research and public health systems and services research.
Peering into Hidden Worlds: The Past and Future of Legal Epidemiology This essay reflects on 10 years of legal epidemiology, and projects a research agenda for the next decade of work.
Policy Surveillance: A Vital Public Health Practice Comes of Age This article makes the case for the practice of policy surveillance to improve public health.
The Five Essential Public Health Law Services The authors propose Five Essential Public Health Law Services, emphasizing investment in people, methods, and tools to enhance policy implementation and health outcomes.
The Growing Field of Legal Epidemiology This commentary describes the emergence of legal epidemiology, its key methods and tools, and the challenges it faces going forward. 
Yes, You Need a Lawyer: Integrating Legal Epidemiology Into Health Research This article makes the case for true transdisciplinary teams in legal epidemiology studies, calling for the inclusion of legal expertise.

Understanding How Law Influences Behaviors and Environments

These resources discuss the many mechanisms through which law works to influence public health. Theories and perspectives in this section come from a number of distinct disciplines, including public health, economics, psychology, sociolegal studies and criminology.  

Title Description
Integrating Diverse Theories for Public Health Law Evaluation This paper explores how different legal theories can be used to study law's effects on health, using safety belt and HIV exposure laws as key examples.
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Criminological Theories This paper provides researchers with key theories from criminology that explain the influence of criminal law on behavior.
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Economic Theory This paper provides an introduction to the concepts used by economists in legal epidemiology research. 
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Law and Society Approaches This paper explores how law influences public health through the law and society tradition, through meaning-making, organizational politics, and "fundamental causes," and how the law and society approach expands public health law research.
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Perspectives from Public Health This paper explores how law influences the many mechanisms through which laws affect economic, social and physical conditions that, in turn, affect population distributions of risky or protective exposures and risky or protective behaviors.
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: Procedural Justice Theory This paper reviews key theories from procedural justice that explain the influence of regulations and legitimacy on behavior. 
Mechanisms of Legal Effect: The Theory of Triadic Influence This paper outlines pathways for laws on prevention, environmental exposure, product regulation, and "soft" laws like labeling to influence health outcomes.

Identifying and Measuring Legal Variables

The starting point for a public health law research study is the careful and credible measurement of law itself. The resources in this section discuss how to conduct legal research and the coding of statutes, regulations and cases in a transparent and reproducible manner.  

Title Description
Coding Case Law for Public Health Law Evaluation This paper explores the special considerations in coding text when the relevant legal materials are judicial decisions.
Conceptual Confusion Leads Policy Evaluation Astray This editorial presents a narrow definition of policy that focuses on its core function and in support of accurate evaluation of those policies and their implementation.
Creating Legal Data for Public Health Monitoring and Evaluation: Delphi Standards for Policy Surveillance This paper reports the results of a Delphi study to define basic standards and practices in the conduct of policy surveillance.
Measuring Statutory Law and Regulations for Empirical Research This is a practical how-to guide in applying the scientific method to measure the law for quantitative research.
Picturing Public Health Law Research: The Value of Causal Diagrams This guide reviews basic conventions used to create visual models, evaluate relevant examples of models in published legal epidemiology studies, and offer recommendations for constructing clear and informative models.
Rigorous Policy Measurement: Causal inference challenges and opportunities This article in American Journal of Epidemiology describes the field of legal epidemiology for epidemiologists, with a focus on challenges in measuring policy exposures, information bias, and consistency assumptions.
Sentinel Surveillance of Emerging Laws and Policies The sentinel surveillance of emerging laws and policies new legal mapping method intended to quickly capture and track emerging laws and legal innovations impacting public health.

Designing Public Health Law Evaluations

The most important determinant of the quality of a public health law evaluation is the research design. The resources in this section outline the use of randomized experiments, natural experiments, cost-benefit analyses, and qualitative research strategies for the investigation of public health laws.

Title Description
Identifying data for the empirical assessment of law (IDEAL): A realist approach to research gaps on the health effects of abortion law This article describes a method to locate evidence on health effects of abortion regulations in existing research that does not explicitly focus on law.
Improving state health policy assessment: An agenda for measurement and analysis This paper examines the scope of inquiry into the measurement and assessment of the state public health policy environment.
Natural Experiments: Design Elements for Optimal Causal Inference Without Randomization This paper describes the advantages of time-series data, how to create a nested multiple comparison group study design, how to combine several design elements in a single study to strengthen causal inference, and identifies further resources. 
Qualitative Research Strategies for Public Health Law Evaluation This video describes qualitative research strategies for public health law evaluation.
Randomized Trials in Legal Epidemiology This resource reviews randomized trials to study policy effects, addressing bias, causal links, and real-world law impacts, using examples like alcohol and smoking interventions.
The Future of Research in Legal Epidemiology This paper highlights the need for improved interdisciplinary collaboration, research standards, and better methods for studying law in the context of public health.
Using Cost-Effectiveness and Cost-Benefit Analysis to Evaluate Public Health Laws This paper introduces methods for economic evaluation of public health law's impact on population health, outlining key steps and decisions in the analysis process.

Textbooks from CPHLR

Textbook cover, titled "Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods"

Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods definitively explores the mechanisms, theories and models central to public health law research – a field dedicated to measuring and studying law as a central means for advancing public health. Learn more by visiting the publisher's web page.

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Bright blue background for textbook cover with title in bold all capitals white reading "The New Public Health Law." A subtitle in yellow font reads "A Transdisciplinary Approach to Practice and Advocacy." This is the second edition of this text by Scott Burris, Micah L. Berman, Matthew Penn, and Tara Ramanathan Holiday

The New Public Health Law is the first textbook to arm lawyers and public health professionals of any background with the tools to fully exploit the potential of law to improve public health. Its transdisciplinary approach breaks down complex legal processes into discrete and understandable stages, making it an indispensable roadmap for the difficult work of crafting, monitoring, and improving public health laws.

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