The Policy Surveillance Program’s 2019 Summer Institute will teach policy surveillance methods during a two-day intensive training at Temple University in Philadelphia. Policy surveillance tracks public health laws and policies over time and across jurisdictions, using a rigorous scientific process to create data for evaluation and empirical research.
Institute participants will:
- Develop a deep understanding of public health law research, also known as legal epidemiology
- Learn how to conduct policy surveillance, a methodology to carry out legal epidemiology. This includes:
- Learning how to efficiently track and analyze policies over time
- Following the steps to create an empirical legal dataset
- Learn the potential for evaluation using legal data
- Network with other policy professionals, including local department of health officials, government agency employees, advocates, and researchers in academia
- Learn the primary steps in conceptualizing a policy rating project using legal mapping data
- Discuss strategies for dissemination, including potential audiences and outlets
Advanced track participants will also learn dataset management techniques in order to effectively lead a policy surveillance project from start to finish.