Information needed to research issues revolving around public health law crosses many disciplines. Depending on the question raised you may need to locate descriptions of diseases or preventive health measures, statistics about the prevalence of a condition, laws or regulations regarding treatment of a condition, etc.
There are so many databases and indexes and journals and books that it's hard to choose where to start or sort through what you find. This guide offers some tips and suggests just a few sources. For the most part, we based them on what is free and easily available on the web. If you want more possibilities, check out the bibliography at the end.
Where can you begin when you want to get an snapshot about a hot topic in the news? Or any heaIth topic? If you are lucky, someone may have already created the information for you. Here are some examples using the current interest in H1N1 preparations.
H1N1
Information page
Contains links to local, state, national, and international agencies describing
preparations and concerns for each of those organizations.
MedlinePlus
Authoritative health information compiled by the National Library of Medicine
(NLM). This site can be used as an overview for any health-related topic. In
the search results, look first for the web page created by the National Library
of Medicine. This page will be laid out with an overview of the topic followed
by a table from which to select links on different aspects of the subject, e.g.
News, Research, and Reference (think organizations, directories, and yes, statistics),
Statistics can be tricky. First, you have to rely on someone to collect them (and in the format or cross tabulation of interest to you). Then they are often older than you would like. (It takes time to process all that data.) Finally, you have to read the footnotes and tables carefully because the numbers may be expressed in various ways.
FastStats
A page from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with an alphabetical listing of public health statistics. Go more in
depth by using the search box on the National Center for Health Statistics website
to delve into the various surveys the government performs to gather health and
healthcare data.
FedStats
Doorway to statistics on a variety of topics (not just health) gathered
by federal agencies.
Statehealthfacts.org
Use this site to get data on such topics as health status, health coverage and
the uninsured as well as run comparisons among states.
WHOSIS (WHO Statistical Information System)
Gateway to international health
statistics from the WHO member states.
PubMed provides access to bibliographic citations with abstracts (and sometimes, free fulltext) to biomedical journal articles, including MEDLINE back to the 1940's, and to additional life sciences journals. A few simple words in the search box can yield information to get you started. Searches can be refined by using the Advanced Search screens or the special query templates, some of which provide pre-formulated searches on topics of interest.
Thomas
Proposed and recent federal legislation.
National Council of State Legislatures
Issue papers, briefings, reports on state legislation. Start with either the
Agency for Healthcare Resarch and Quality (AHRQ)
The health services research arm of Health and Human Services, this agency conducts
and funds research in health care access, costs, organization, and results.
The website has fact sheets and reports on a wide variety of topics - e.g.,
Health Care Disparities in Rural Areas, Medical Errors: The Scope of the Problem,
Health Information Technology: Overview, Understanding Needs for Health System
Preparedness and Capacity for Bioterrorist Attacks.
Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland maintains an online
collection of
CRS reports in Health Law and Policy (and also Homeland Security). This
complements the broader collections at OpenCRS
and Congressional
Research Service Reports, Hosted by UNT Libraries.
Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Often very current reports on health-related issues - e.g., preparedness for pandemic influenza, children's access to dental services under Medicaid, federal and state efforts to identify people with HIV/AIDS and connect them with care.
A lot of heated rhetoric swirls around the role of litigation. Some blame a share of rising health care costs on high litigation and skyrocketing jury awards. Others say that the availability of malpractice remedies helps compensate victims and deter future malpractice. These two sides are represented by:
The Institute for Legal Reform (an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce)
and
American Association for Justice (formerly American Trial Lawyers Association)
Empirical legal studies uses social science research methods (e.g., from sociology, political science, or psychology) to look at law and legal institutions. A number of interesting studies try to evaluate the claims in this debate, exploring, for instance, whether health care costs go down in states that adopt tort reforms such as caps on medical malpractice damages.
Legal Scholarship Blog's list of Empirical Legal Studies Resources
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
Thousands of abstracts and papers. Free.
Empirical Legal Studies Bibliography
The items listed here will lead you to still more resources to help answer your questions about public health law.
Gallagher Law Library has guides on a variety of health law topics.
HealthLinks Public Health Toolkit from the UW Health Sciences Libraries.
HealthLinks Statistics from the UW Health Sciences Libraries.
Sharma, S. Health care management resources: web sites for the national debate. C&RL News 2009 Sep; 70(8): 460-4.
Prepared for the Northwest Government Information Network Meeting 6 November 2009 by Terry Ann Jankowski and Mary Whisner. Links are accurate as of 5 November 2009 .