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January 2009, Vol 99, No. 1 | American Journal of Public Health 17-24
© 2009 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2007.130278

HEALTH POLICY AND ETHICS

The Scientific Basis for Law as a Public Health Tool

Anthony D. Moulton, PhD, Shawna L. Mercer, PhD, Tanja Popovic, MD, PhD, F(AAM), AM(AAFS), Peter A. Briss, MD, MPH, Richard A. Goodman, MD, JD, MPH, Melisa L. Thombley, JD, MPH, Robert A. Hahn, PhD, MPH and Daniel M. Fox, PhD

Anthony D. Moulton, Richard A. Goodman, and Melisa L. Thombley are with the Public Health Law Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA. Shawna L. Mercer and Robert A. Hahn are with the Guide to Community Preventive Services, CDC, Atlanta. Tanja Popovic is with the Office of the Director, CDC, Atlanta. Peter A. Briss is with the Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, CDC, Atlanta. Daniel M. Fox is with the Milbank Memorial Fund, New York, NY.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Anthony Moulton, Public Health Law Program, MS D-30, 1600 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30333 (e-mail: tmoulton{at}cdc.gov).

Systematic reviews are generating valuable scientific knowledge about the impact of public health laws, but this knowledge is not readily accessible to policy makers. We identified 65 systematic reviews of studies on the effectiveness of 52 public health laws: 27 of those laws were found effective, 23 had insufficient evidence to judge effectiveness, 1 was harmful, and 1 was found to be ineffective. This is a valuable, scientific foundation—that uses the highest relevant standard of evidence—for the role of law as a public health tool.

Additional primary studies and systematic reviews are needed to address significant gaps in knowledge about the laws’ public health impact, as are energetic, sustained initiatives to make the findings available to public policy makers.




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