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Learn how state and territorial legislatures can bolster or restrict public health legal authority, with examples from early COVID-19 as well as 2024.

The ASTHO State Health Policy team provides brief updates on 5 of the ten state health policy issues to watch in 2022: mental and behavioral health, rural health, e-cigarettes and flavored tobacco products, HIV and PFAS.

Continuing ASTHO’s Legislative Prospectus series—which highlights the top 10 public health policy issues for 2022—we are focusing this week on mental and behavioral health as well as supporting the public health workforce.

With many of the state and territorial legislatures reconvening over the next few weeks, we can look forward to new (and not-so-new) legislation start to crop up that will impact public health. To help navigate the new legislative ...

The 2020 holiday season is coinciding with a nationwide surge of COVID-19 cases. With great concern that holiday travel to see loved ones may exacerbate community spread of the virus, many states are increasing public health measures ...

Following disruptions to daily life caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency departments saw an increase of mental health-related visits. A June 2021 study showed a significant increase of mental health-related visits among ...

The 2019-2020 flu season had approximately 5 million fewer illnesses than the previous year. Thanks to COVID-19 mitigation efforts like social distancing and increased handwashing—coupled with a higher rate of flu vaccinations among the ...

Public health leaders are positioned to prevent illness from the "tripledemic” of COVID-19, Influenza, and RSV with approved vaccines and preventative antibody treatments.

One of the major disruptions to daily life caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was the rapid shift from in-person K-12 education to virtual learning. While necessary for social distancing and slowing the spread of disease, there is a concern ...

As the U.S. continues to undertake the largest vaccination campaign in almost a century, it has required government at all levels to surge workforce capacity. The federal government, states, territories, and local jurisdictions are acting ...

On March 15, 2023, ASTHO announced a jointly-authored article on state and territorial emergency powers since the COVID-19 pandemic has been published in Journal of Emergency Management.

Accompanying an infusion of federal funding, states are considering several policy changes to strengthen the public health workforce and address challenges within the health care workforce.

During the 2022 state legislative sessions, at least 20 states considered bills that would require a religious exemption to a vaccine requirement. As state legislatures continue considering vaccine protocols for COVID-19, HPV, and other ...

Under the Tenth Amendment, states have the power to protect the health and welfare of their populations, including the authority to implement isolation and quarantine orders to limit the spread of disease. This post is an examination of ...

As leaders of their state agency, state and territorial health officials can be named parties in lawsuits alleging that an action taken by a public health agency was unlawful. These officials are typically sued in their “official ...

The ASTHO State Health Policy team provides brief updates on 5 of the ten state health policy issues to watch in 2022: public health authority, immunization, data privacy and modernization, public health workforce, and health equity.

ASTHO has identified health equity and rural health as issues that policymakers across the country will consider in 2022.

Policies that broadly define "vaccine" expand access to life saving immunization products.

Reconciling the tension between public health and civil liberties is one of the most significant challenges of public health law and ethics. The Supreme Court of the United States historically upheld state authority to enact and enforce ...

Anticipating a rapid deployment of COVID-19 vaccines as they are authorized, the CDC developed COVID-19 Vaccination Program Operational Guidance in collaboration with state and local jurisdictions to outline how each jurisdiction will make ...