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.

    Public Health Analyst at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
    "Law really is a social determinant of health. Policy surveillance gives us an opportunity to track legislation so we might begin to learn how a law is impacting a community’s health – positively or negatively."

    Rachel’s story:

    We used LawAtlas to collect and catalog Medicaid prior-authorization polices related to prescriptions for children with ADHD for CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. We were interested in comparing the legal landscape with Medicaid reimbursement rates to see if prior-authorization policies could potentially impact prescriber behavior based on academic recommendations.

    The most appealing part to me is the accessibility to the public. Not only is it a publically available domain — with links that I can send to anyone who is interested (especially decision makers) — but it is also interactive, so people who are not lawyers, who are not trained in law and policy, can get a visual of what the landscape is like, and dig down from there to see what’s going on in their state and the surrounding states. They can even learn from states that may be doing a better or worse job at managing the public health outcome is that they are interested in. I like that it’s really accessible to more people than just lawyers.

    Law really is a social determinant of health. Policy surveillance gives us an opportunity to track legislation so we might begin to learn how a law is impacting a community’s health – positively or negatively.

    Rachel Hulkower is a Public Health Analyst at Chenega Professional & Technical Services, LLC.