Globalization has led to an appreciation of a global politics beyond the control of nation-states and the traditional system of international relations. Global politics is characterized by a pluralization of governance mediated by a constant effort to establish shared norms of global public...

A Rapid Policy Assessment and Response (RPAR) intervention was conducted in Szczecin, Poland, to assess the impact of drug policy on the health of drug users in the city and surrounding rural areas. In the RPAR, a team of Polish researchers worked with a Community Action Board (CAB) comprised of...

It has become a commonplace to claim that HIV has been treated "differently" than other disease by health policy makers. This claim - the "exceptionalism thesis" - is, I argue here, fundamentally ahistorical, overlooking that virtually all major public health threats have inspired political...

In Stigma and the Ethics of Public Health: Not Can We but Should We, 67 SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE (2008), Ronald Bayer asks whether "stigmatization always represents a threat to public health?" and whether "there [are] occasions when the mobilization of stigma may effectively reduce the...

Under U.S. regulations known as the Common Rule, federally-supported human-subject research must be reviewed by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). The Common Rule system looks from a distance like an innovative instantiation of prescriptions for constitutive regulation and soft law, but in...

Objectives: This review examines the effects of family economic security policies on child and family health outcomes, formulates a framework for possible mechanisms of effect, and introduces our policy surveillance system to measure changes in state laws affecting social determinants of health....

Research over the past three decades has shown convincingly that population health is shaped powerfully by the contexts in which people live, learn, work, and play - also called social determinants of health or fundamental social causes of disease. The World Health Organization, the Centers for...

Innovations in the governance of security may both reduce the harms that criminal justice systems produce and positively promote the conditions necessary to good health. In this article, the authors provide an example of the interaction of traditional criminal justice practices and health, and...

Law is a significant factor in public health, and an important tool government can use for protecting and promoting well-being. Legal risks and interventions can only be properly understood through epidemiological and evaluation research. “Legal epidemiology,” the scientific study of law as...

Urban health promotion is not simply a matter of the right interventions, or even the necessary resources. Urban (and indeed global) health depends to an important extent on governance, the institutions and processes through which societies manage the course of events. This paper describes the...