The Legal Implications of HIPAA Privacy and Public Health Reporting for Correctional Facilities.

Inmates in cramped living quarters, a situation common to correctional facilities, are especially vulnerable to disease. Cramped living conditions, coupled with above-average rates of HIV, tuberculosis, and other communicable diseases, increase inmates' risk of problematic health outcomes. Thus, high-quality health care and sustained efforts to prevent disease are especially important to improve inmate health within correctional facilities. Compliance with federal privacy restrictions pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and state disease reporting requirements will foster inmate health and assist efforts to prevent the spread of disease. This article examines the interplay between HIPAA rules and state reporting laws to preserve health information privacy and to control the spread of disease.

Major trends in public health law and practice: a network national report.

Since its inception in September 2010, the Network for Public Health Law has responded to hundreds of public health legal technical assistance claims from around the country. Based on a review of these data, a series of major trends in public health practice and the law are analyzed, including issues concerning: the Affordable Care Act, tobacco control, emergency legal preparedness, health information privacy, food policy, vaccination, drug overdose prevention, sports injury law, public health accreditation, and maternal breastfeeding. These and other emerging themes in public health law demonstrate the essential role of law and practice in advancing the public's health.

Reconsidering the legality of cigarette smoking advertisements on television public health and the law.

Television advertisements depicting the use of electronic cigarettes have recently exposed minors to images of smoking behaviors. While these advertisements are currently legal, existing laws should be interpreted or expanded to ban the commercial depiction of smoking behaviors with any product that resembles a cigarette to shield minors from potentially influential advertising.