Public health policy: The intersection of health care and law

If a community doesn’t have a grocery store, it can make it difficult for its residents to buy and eat healthy foods. One way a city can help provide healthy choices is to consider zoning and other changes in local statutes to make it easier for supermarkets to serve more people.









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Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., a national leader in health policy and public health, will speak at UNMC today at a College of Public Health Grand Rounds.
Taking a public health problem and encouraging changes in local, state and federal laws is the result of public health policy.

During a presentation at UNMC today, Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., will discuss the link between public health policy and national health care reform.

Rosenbaum is a professor of health services management and policy and chairwoman of the department of health policy at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University.

Below, she discusses the impact of public health policy.

What do we need to know about policy and how it affects health care?












Today’s seminar



Rosenbaum will discuss more about the legal components of health care policy today at noon in the Eppley Science Hall Amphitheater. Lunch will be provided for the first 40 attendees. The seminar will be broadcast live online.




Health care takes place within a complex policy framework that addresses access, cost and quality and that defines the duties of the health care system where protection of the public’s health and prevention of disease are concerned.

How does that tie to public health?

In order to carry out the fundamental assurances that lie at the heart of public health, public health professionals need to be intimately familiar with the role of health policy in shaping public health functions and the health care enterprise.

How will legal challenges impact the health care reform law?

If successful, the legal challenges could result in the repeal of the entire law and as a result, not only the law but some trillion dollars in a 10-year federal investment in health and health care would be lost.