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.

    Deputy Director of Public Health Nebraska DHHS at State of Nebraska
    "Fundamentally, policy surveillance ensures that our efforts to promote and protect the public’s health is effective. We live in an age of increasing collection of and access to data. Incorporating laws into the data analysis should help guide decisions on allocation of increasingly scarce resources to enable the best outcomes."

    Darrell’s story:

    My office, at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, participated in an RWJF-funded project to assess the relationships between public health management and public health legal support at the state and local level. Through that project, we created an inventory of all state-level and local statutes in Lincoln and Omaha, focusing on ordinances and regulations governing, impacting or advancing public health.

    “Public Health Legal” here in Nebraska had previously prepared indices and summaries of the public health laws the state public health agency is charged with administering. These began as papers-in-notebooks for incoming public health officers. However, we had later versions in word-processing format and our state statutes and regulations are online, as are the laws of the larger local public health departmental entities in Nebraska.

    The interface is more intuitive for public health practitioners than traditional compilations of the law, and actually can be fun. If the law is demystified, it can be better and more widely understood and followed. The LawAtlas’ topical organization is designed to fit public health practice and be more user-friendly than statutory compilations. Many smaller public health departments lack ready access to knowledgeable public health legal support. LawAtlas is a useful partial substitute.

    Fundamentally, policy surveillance ensures that our efforts to promote and protect the public’s health is effective. We live in an age of increasing collection of and access to data. Incorporating laws into the data analysis should help guide decisions on allocation of increasingly scarce resources to enable the best outcomes.

    Darrell Klein is the Assistant Agency Counsel for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Learn more about the Nebraska Public Health Laws project by visiting
    http://legacy.lawatlas.org/nebraska.