LawAtlas Success Stories:
  • Kelly Thompson, Esq.
    Health Policy Expert
  • Laura Thomas, MPH, MPP
    Deputy State Director, California, of the Drug Policy Alliance
  • Alessandra Ross, MPH
    Injection Drug Use Specialist
  • Bryce Pardo, PhD
    Associate Director, Drug Policy Research Center; Policy Researcher
  • Benjamin Mason Meier, JD, LLM, PhD
    Professor of global health policy in the Dept. of Public Policy and the Dept. of Health Policy and Mgmt. at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
  • Darrell Klein, JD
    Deputy Director of Public Health Nebraska DHHS at State of Nebraska
  • Manel Kappagoda, JD, MPH
    Program Director and Senior Staff Attorney ChangeLab Solutions Oakland, CA
  • Emalie Huriaux, MPH
    Integration, Hepatitis C, and Drug User Health Program Manager for the Washington State Department of Health
  • Rachel Hulkower, JD, MSPH
    Public Health Analyst at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Micah Berman, JD
    Associate professor of public health and law at The Ohio State University's College of Public Health and Michael E. Moritz College of Law
  • Maya Doe-Simkins, MPH
    Public health educator, researcher and consultant
  • Nabarun Dasgupta, MPH, PhD
    Epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
    • LawAtlas Success Stories:

    User Success Stories

    Click a name below to view their story, or browse all stories to the right.

    Injection Drug Use Specialist
    "Policy surveillance illuminates the hidden undergirding of our society’s attitudes toward drugs, harm reduction and law enforcement. These laws and policies are often quite hidden from the people who are doing the day-to-day work."

    Alessandra’s story:

    A great deal of the work that I do is policy analysis. Especially in California, it’s really important to be able to see how other states of similar size and demographics are handling certain issues. Nobody really matches us exactly, but if I can get a detailed picture of what’s happening in New York, Texas or Florida, I can paint a better picture of what the policy environment is for the changes that may be proposed to our laws and policies.

    A bill was passed in 2011 to allow the state of California to authorize syringe exchange at the state level. Prior to that, it could only be done at the local level, similar to Massachusetts and Washington. We had to write regulations to go along with the bill, so being able to view exactly what other states had done, which states had the kind of process we were thinking of, who had instituted what rules, was really critical. LawAtlas was instrumental in the process for constructing the program that we eventually designed.

    Policy surveillance is essential. There are policies in place that no one knows about unless someone writes about them — policy surveillance illuminates the hidden undergirding of our society’s attitudes toward drugs, harm reduction and law enforcement. These laws and policies are often quite hidden from the people who are doing the day-to-day work.

    For example, someone may think that they can only give out 30 syringes in California because, at one point, that is what they were told they could do, when in actuality the law says something completely different. Without being able to dig deeper, to say, “that this is the actual law, and here’s the reason behind it,” we can’t know how to make changes. That’s invaluable.

    Alessandra Ross is an injection drug use specialist at the California Department of Public Health, Office of AIDS.