Act for Public Health: Strengthening of Public Health

About this dataset:

Throughout COVID-19, several state legislators recognized the need to support public health during a global pandemic and introduced different types of bills enhancing the organizational independence of health agencies, creating COVID-19 task forces centering equity, and empowering state and local health officials with more tools to act quickly during an emergency.

This longitudinal dataset captures details of legislation strengthening public health introduced between January 1, 2021, and May 20, 2022, in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. This dataset contains parallel, often overlapping records to show multiple bills that may exist at the same time within a given state. States with such records are indicated on the map with an asterisk; individual record responses can be viewed by clicking on the state within the map or table view. Each individual bill is coded as a separate instance and labeled by its bill number. 

This dataset is one of six that were created in collaboration with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Network for Public Health Law as part of the Act for Public Health initiative.