Government | PHERN

American Public Health Association: Public Health Under Threat

This resource provides information on current threats to public health policy and infrastructure, emphasizing advocacy for science-based, equitable approaches t...

What Happens When Your Policy Goes to Court?

This resource explores legal challenges to public health policies and offers strategies for prevention and defense. It aims to help public health professionals ...

Indiana’s Public Health Investment Holds Insights For Other States

This resource delves into Indiana’s increase in public health spending by 1,500 percent in 2023 amidst strained trust in governmental public health nation...

Minnesota Public Health Corps: A New Model For Building the Governmental Public Health Workforce

This resource examines the impact of Public Health AmeriCorps, particularly the Minnesota Public Health Corps, in addressing workforce shortages and building ca...

Judicial Decisions Constraining Public Health Powers During COVID-19: Implications For Public Health Policy Making

This resource examines how US courts have increasingly constrained public health legal powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding mitigation or...

Protecting Local Democracy: 2023 Legislative Session Overview

This report explores all the preemption trends in states nationwide this past year. The report also highlights what issues advocates are most concerned about as...

Laws Addressing Public Health Authority to Respond to Emergencies

This resource is a longitudinal dataset that captures laws addressing authority to respond to public health emergencies enacted between May 21, 2022, and April ...

Connecting the Dots: How to Message the Abuse of State Preemption

This guide is designed for starting conversations about preemption, especially abusive preemption. They provide a comprehensive strategy on how to begin the con...

Building Your Advocacy Toolbox: Advocacy vs. Lobbying

This flyer discusses the key differences between health advocacy and lobbying. They provide a description of each action and examples of how they both can be ap...

State Legislation Addressing Public Health Emergency Authority

This repository contains data on legal threats to public health authority beween January 1, 2021, and May 20, 2022. The six available data sets concern state le...

‘It’s a Tsunami’: Legal Challenges Threatening Public Health Policy

This articles discusses the various court orders that diminished public health authority surrounding mask and vaccine mandates. The authors discuss the potentia...

FrameWorks: Government

This website discusses how to approach communication oriented around the government and policy. It contains various articles, reports, and toolkits on how to fr...

FrameWorks: Evidence-Based Policymaking

FrameWorks provides a resource hub for evidence-based policymaking and communications support. The website includes guides and webinars regarding reframing soci...

State Laws Limiting Public Health Protections: Hazardous for Our Health

This report contains an analysis of all state laws that impact public health authority as of May 20, 2022. The laws described in this report relate to the COVID...

Sentinel Surveillance of Emerging Laws Limiting Public Health Emergency Orders

This policy brief synthesizes the data depicted in Temple University’s Sentinel Surveillance of Emerging Laws Limiting Public Health Emergency Orders. The...

Connecting the Dots: How to Message the Abuse of State Preemption, Audience-Specific Message Modules

This guide is an addendum to an existing guide that provides specific strategies on how to facilitate conversations about preemption. This guide provides sugges...

2022 End-of-Session Report: ‘Undermining Democracy’

This report showcases certain preemption state laws that were introduced and/or enacted in the 2022 legislative session. These laws relate to public health auth...

Campaign Toolkits: Preemption

This guide provides advocacy materials for public health preemption. The resource introduces preemption and provides guides for recruitment, engagement, and mob...

Fundamentals of Preemption

This fact sheet provides summarizes the main types of preemption and how it operates. The authors provide various examples of preemption to understand how they ...

FACT SHEET: President Biden Signs Executive Order To Strengthen Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Across the Federal Government

This resource covers President Biden’s executive order aimed at strengthening racial equity and support for underserved communities across the federal gov...

What Happens When COVID-19 Emergency Declarations End? Implications for Coverage, Costs, and Access

This brief provides an overview of the major health-related COVID-19 federal emergency declarations that have been made and summarizes the flexibilities trigger...

The End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Details on Health Coverage and Access

This article outlines what major health policies will and won’t change when the public health emergency (and national emergency) declarations end. Included is...

Legislators Introduced More Than 1,500 Bills To Change the Authority of State and Local Health Agencies and Executive Officers During 2021 and 2022 Legislative Sessions

This article covers new data released by the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law regarding the legislative sess...

Act for Public Health

Act for Public Health provides direct support to public health departments and others through consultation, training, legal technical assistance, research, and ...

Building the CDC the Country Needs

This Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report enumerates the essential, concrete, near-term steps that will return the CDC to a pathway of h...

Will America’s Public Health Reckoning Ever Come?

This story explores how after a pandemic that killed more than 1 million people in the United States alone, very little about the federal government has changed...

How To Counter Preemption Laws That Can Undermine Health Equity

This blog post discusses how local communities are shaping solutions to counter preemption laws and give everyone a fair and just opportunity for health.

Championing Public Health Amid Legal and Legislative Threats: Framing and Language Recommendations

This report explores the ways that public health authority is being eroded and suggests ways to hold lawmakers accountable, illustrate to community members...

CDC Moving Forward Summary Report

This report summarizes the findings of the two-part review of the CDC, which included the scientific and programmatic review, and the structural review. It iden...

The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear

This story discusses how American leaders and pundits have been trying to call an end to the pandemic and how this mindset not only compromises the nation’s a...

Summit 3 Accelerating Action Report: Strengthening Public Health Law, Governance and Finance to Support a Modern System

The third in the CDC Foundation’s Lights, Camera, Action: The Future of Public Health series, this summit brought together nearly 1,500 participants that ...

2022 Is the Year of Decision

This report proposes eight recommendations to strengthen America’s health security and secure U.S. global leadership in the next phase of pandemic respons...

Staffing Up: Workforce Levels Needed to Provide Basic Public Health Services

This brief details an analysis, informed by the COVID-19 pandemic, that was completed to estimate the number of state and local public health department staff n...

Data Modernization Initiative Strategic Implementation Plan

This document describes a multi-year, billion-plus dollar effort to modernize core data and surveillance infrastructure across the federal and state public...

American Pandemic Preparedness: Transforming Our Capabilities

This document describes the critical work needed to transform U.S. capabilities to respond rapidly and effectively to any future pandemic or high consequence bi...

National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan, March 2022

This White House plan lays out a roadmap for fighting COVID-19 in the future as we begin to get back to our more normal routines. The plan focuses on four key g...

Public Health 3.0 After COVID-19—Reboot or Upgrade?

This article discusses the role of governmental public health in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and stresses that policymakers and practitioners need to prio...

The Impact of Chronic Underfunding on America’s Public Health System: Trends, Risks, and Recommendations, 2022

This report tracks federal, state, and local investment in public health and how underinvestment in public health programs impacted the COVID-19 response, exace...

How Investing in Public Health Will Strengthen America’s Health

This report discusses how investments in public health not only improve the health of society but also advance equity and foster economic and climate resiliency...

Meeting America’s Public Health Challenge

This report outlines recommendations for building a national public health system that addresses ongoing and future health crises, advances equity, and earns tr...

Understanding Coverage Considerations for COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatments

This report provides an overview of the current coverage and payment of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments across payers, identifies expected gaps in coverage aft...

United by Hope, Divided by Access: Country Mapping of COVID-19 Information Accessibility and Its Consequences on Pandemic Eradication

This article explores the importance of accessibility implementation during normal times, and points out that the current COVID-19 pandemic highlights just how ...

Intergovernmental Dimensions of the COVID-19 Responses and Consequences

This report examines the varied and sometimes conflicting governmental responses to the pandemic and outlines 37 actionable recommendations across four intergov...

State Policy Can Reduce Systemic Racism in Public Health

This blog post examines the role of state policies in reducing systemic racism within the public health sector. The impacts of existing state policies, like dec...

Preemption and Policymaking in Public Health Law: From Local to Global

This webinar introduces the roles of various levels of government in public health policymaking and the ways that preemption is interfering with local democrati...

Politics and Pandemic Fatigue Doom California’s Covid Vaccine Mandates

This story outlines the general failure of vaccine mandates in California, particularly in those that focus on children. The need for education, public informat...

Trusted Voices for COVID-19: Engaging Community Leaders To Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy

This story highlights three COVID-19 outreach initiatives that use peer-to-peer communication with trusted messengers and other evidence-based strategies to eas...

Summit Emphasizes Need for Vision That Improves Health for All Through Governance, Law and Finance

This summit discusses future challenges in public health, specifically how law, governance, and finance are all intertwined and essential for strong public heal...

The Color of COVID-19

This panel discussion explores the underlying causes of the pandemic’s disparate impact on communities of color, as well as the inequitable responses by g...

Outbreaks Near Me

This tool allows users to explore COVID-19 and flu data in their communities. Users can view self-reported data and government-reported date. They can also cont...

COVID-19 Health Equity Initiatives Across the United States

This website highlights the efforts of health care, governmental and community organizations across the country that are providing resources to minoritized and ...

Preemption: Connecting Preemption, Public Health and Equity

This webpage highlights resources from ChangeLab Solutions to help inform public officials and community leaders about how preemption can affect their efforts t...

Resources About the COVID-19 Pandemic

This webpage contains a curated collection of COVID-19 resources from Local Solutions Support Center’s partners. It is organized by topic area, which incl...

Pandemic Data Initiative

This initiative explores lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic on how to best support government efforts to collect and deliver comprehensive real-time inf...

Governmental Public Health Powers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Stay-at-Home Orders, Business Closures, and Travel Restrictions

This journal article outlines what legal powers governments have, what the role of the courts is, and how public health can be balanced with personal and econom...

Preemption, Public Health, and Equity in the Time of COVID-19

This paper was prepared as part of Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19. It covers the effects of preemption on economic recovery, how preemption impacts exist...

Slowing the Spread of COVID-19 Will Protect Communities

This article discusses how the government can better use data and new technologies to cope with new outbreaks with the goal to protect the nation’s health...

State and Local Governments Spent $150B. Then Got $350B More. Follow the Money.

This data story provides charts that compare payments from the Coronavirus Relief Fund and the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund for the top 15 states.

Who Are Prime Recipients and Sub-Recipients?

This data story explains the difference between prime-recipients and sub-recipients.

Building a More Inclusive Internet, Beyond COVID-19

This article provides information on how governments, businesses, and civil society organizations can work together to make the internet better and more inclusi...

Preemption and Public Health

This infographic outlines why preemption matters for public health. It provides the definition of preemption, as well as its implications for community-driven p...

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource Center

This webpage provides a deep well of information for public health experts, business preparedness leaders, government officials, and the public on COVID-19.

Bonus Training: Preemption

This presentation explores the connections between preemption, public health, and equity. It also contains information regarding how preemption can hinder or ad...

COVID-19 Outbreaks: State Reporting By Setting

This report identifies states that have defined and are reporting setting-specific COVID-19 outbreaks as of November 2020 and highlights promising examples that...

Reflecting On Management Lessons In Public Health Data Infrastructure During COVID-19

This report from the Partnership for Public Service provides information on emergency preparedness and response in the public services. Recommendations are prov...

An Equity-First Approach To Assessing Preemption

The report summarizes an approach for assessing negative and positive effects of preemption on health equity. It outlines a research and advocacy agenda for bui...

Addressing Health Equity In The New Preemption Era

This article outlines the concept of preemption and how this concept has been evolving in recent years, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This re...

Assessing and Addressing Preemption

This resource contains an overview of preemption, describes how it can affect health equity, and outlines generally how local authority is granted in different ...

Legal Authority For Local Health Officers’ and Local Governments’ Responses To COVID-19 In California

This legal memo outlines legal authority of local health officers and local governments in the state of California to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It outli...

TRAIN Learning Network

TRAIN is a learning platform that provides access to a national catalog of trainings developed by government agencies, universities, professional associations, ...

The Bridge Between Public Health Education and Government Workforce Needs Fixing

This article discusses rebuilding the U.S. Public Health system with a new generation of highly trained, diverse public health professionals. It calls on curren...

Need to Know: Details on Biden’s New Public Health Workforce Plan

This article provides information on Biden’s public health workforce plan and the long term public health goals of the administration.

Bouncing Back (and Forth): Statewide Reopening and Mitigation Steps

This chart provides links to key reopening orders and/or mitigation measures affecting the private sector issued at the statewide level.

The State of the U.S. Governmental Public Health Workforce, 2014-2017

This journal article provides novel information on the state of the U.S. public health workforce, using data from the Public Health Workforce Interests and Need...

Public Health Workforce Taxonomy

This paper presents a new public health workforce taxonomy and explains the process in which it was developed.

Public Health Law and Science in the Community Mitigation Strategy for COVID-19

This journal article examines the role of public health scientific guidelines in the adjudication of legal challenges to mandatory orders adopted as part of the...

Building Skills for a More Strategic Public Health Workforce: A Call to Action

This guide describes strategic skills for the governmental public health workforce, recommendations for workforce development, and potential actions that can be...

Public Health Threats and the US Constitution: What Responders Need To Know About Equity, Law, and Public Health Authority

This curriculum provides law training for state and local officials on how to balance public health authority against individual liberty using the U.S. constitu...

State And Local Health Department Governance Classification Map

This map identifies structural differences of public health governance structures across states to understand the roles, responsibilities, and authorizes for se...

Two Centuries of Law Guide Legal Approach to Modern Pandemic

This article discusses legal limits on government actions during the health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trust In The Age Of COVID-19: The Role Of Governments, Businesses And Unicef

A conversation with Mr. Yannis Kotziagkiaouridis, a Global Chief Data and Analytics Officer, about the Edelman Trust Barometer and the implications of declining...

Addressing Community Needs And Preparing For The Secondary Impacts Of COVID-19

This webpage provides information on the importance of cross-sector collaboration to address multiple community needs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. It al...

Creating The Next Community Health Needs Assessments In The Aftermath Of Covid

This webpage discusses the significance and methods for community health needs assessment in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights specific community ...

Natural Disasters and COVID-19: Preparedness Information for Specific Groups

This webpage offers instructions on how children, pregnant women, older adults, people with chronic diseases, disabilities, and mental health disorders can appr...

Public Health Emergency Declarations

This webpage is a running list of public health emergency declarations from the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with the type of ...

Legal Authority Of The Secretary

This webpage by the Department of Health and Human Services provides general information about the Secretary’s legal authorities during public health and ...

COVID-19: Data Sharing For Public Health Surveillance, Investigation And Intervention

This webinar highlights federal and state laws like HIPPA that affect public health’s ability to share COVID-19 information and data.

Public Health Under Threat: An Examination Of State Laws Protecting Public Health Officials From Harassment

This webinar shares results from a national survey on criminal statutes that protect public health officials, analyzes burnout and employee turnover, and discus...

The Abc’s Of Administrative Law In Public Health Practice

An introduction to administrative law, this webinar explains how public health agencies can implement and enforce their policies and programs at all government ...

Ensuring Changes In Emergency Powers And Public Health Authority Will Protect Health

This webinar explores the nature of recent laws and legislation in various states and explains principles that should guide future legislation to include facts,...

Proposed Limits On Public Health Authority: Dangerous For Public Health

Amidst dissatisfaction and anger at public health officials in response to COVID-19, this webinar organized with National Association of County and City Health ...

Proposed Limits On Public Health Authority: Dangerous For Public Health

This report explores the history of public health authority, including longstanding and recent efforts to undermine it. It provides arguments to counter propose...

Reducing Burnout and Resignations Among Frontline Workers: A Field Experiment

This journal article discusses how government agencies around the world struggle to retain frontline workers as high job demands and low job resources contribut...

Enhancing Public Trust in COVID-19 Vaccination: The Role of Governments

This journal article addresses the role of governments in promoting confidence in the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines through effective communicat...

US Emergency Legal Responses To Novel Coronavirus: Balancing Public Health And Civil Liberties

This article explains the legality of public health emergency declarations including compulsory powers, health assessments, quarantine, and travel restrictions.

Public Health COVID-19 Impact Assessment: Lessons Learned And Compelling Needs

This article discusses the interdisciplinary functions of public health, the effects of legacy systems and policies on the sector’s response to COVID-19, ...

Trust in Public Health Is Essential Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article describes the challenges public health and healthcare leaders face in building trust. It also includes strategies to combat issues like attachment ...

State And Local Public Health: An Overview Of Regulatory Authority

This publication explains common questions and answers about the role of state of local public health departments and boards of health in public health regulati...

Coronavirus Emergency Management Best Practices

This data bank is a compilation of the best practices and lessons learned that communities faced fighting COVID-19.

The Governmental Public Health Infrastructure

This chapter of The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century explores the state of governmental public health infrastructure, including the role ...

The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century

This book outlines a systems approach for public health, discussing the need for a population-based framework for practice, research, policy, and community enga...

The Federal Government Pledges $100 Million To Address Health Care Worker Shortages

This article discusses how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now committing $100 million to address health care worker shortages through the ...

Biden Administration Promises Predictability On Future Extensions Of The Public Health Emergency

This blog outlines the implications of the Biden Administration’s continuation of the public health emergency (PHE) declaration and what it means for fede...

Pandemic Highlights The Barrier Represented By The Public Health Regulatory Structure

This article discusses the barriers to modernization of the public health system posed by existing regulatory structures and suggests priority areas for utilizi...

Pandemic Backlash Jeopardizes Public Health Powers, Leaders

This story gives examples of recent legislation aimed at weakening public health authority and discusses rising rates of burnout among officials.

Public Health Regulations

This blog post, which is accompanied by a webinar, defines administrative law, explains where public health agencies sit within the U.S. governmental system, an...

Why Public Health Faces A Crisis Across The U.S.

This article examines how the nation may less prepared for the next pandemic than it was for COVID-19, partly through the story of a family physician in Washing...

New State Laws Hamstring Public Health Officials

This article explores how new states laws passed during COVID-19 curtail health agencies’ emergency powers to invoke restrictions like quarantines and mas...

Leadership In COVID-19: Building Public Trust Is Key

This article from the UK examines the relationship between public trust and science, the consequences of losing trust, and emerging government strategies.

Public-Private Disease Surveillance Partnerships are What’s Needed to Stop the Next Pandemic

This article discusses the need for and potential of partnerships between private organizations and governments to develop surveillance systems in order to prev...

Common Indicators of Success

This chart is intended to help state, territory, local, and tribal governments with COVID-19 efforts. It provides a short overview of indicators of success and ...

The Way Forward on COVID-19

This report is intended to help policymakers prepare for future public health emergencies based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides ten r...

Hey Google, Which Social Distancing Policies Work Best?

This article describes how Boston University faculty analyzed data from the Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports provide insight on how people’s mov...

Pandemic to Prosperity: South – Focusing on the South to Lead the Way in Pandemic Recovery

This report provides a status update on how Southern states in the United States have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The key indicators are organized i...

Public Support for Social Safety-Net Policies for COVID-19 in the United States, April 2020

This article presents the findings of a survey on public perception of the role of government in society and public support for safety-net measures, including h...

National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic-Preparedness

This document presents a national strategy for the federal government, as well as state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, health care providers, busi...

An Overburdened Charitable Food System: Making the Case for Increased Government Support During the COVID-19 Crisis

This article makes the case for increasing support and funding from federal and state governments for the charitable food system. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic a...

Building Trust in and Access to a COVID-19 Vaccine Within Communities of Color and Tribal Nations: A Framework for Action Convening

This policy brief focuses on how historic maltreatment of communities of color and tribal nations, along with current day structural racism, have created distru...

Contact Tracing Resources for COVID-19 Response

This resource hub highlights useful resources from governmental public health, academia, think tanks, and nonprofits to support local health departments in desi...

COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Toolkit

This toolkit offers resources and strategies for care delivery organizations, health plans, and state and local governments to ensure everyone has access to lif...

COVID-19 Response & Recovery

This webpage offers a collection of COVID-19policy solutions that prioritize health equity. It includes blog posts with immediate solutions for communities and ...

The Need for COVID-19 LGBTQ-Specific Data

This editorial discusses the need for LGBTQ-specific data and examines the role of the federal government to address this data gap.

State and Local Testing Strategies for Responding to COVID-19 Outbreaks in Communities: Considerations for Equitable Distribution

This report provides considerations for equitably prioritizing testing resources to communities at greatest risk as states and local governments face shortages ...