A Scan of Existing 50 State Survey and Policy Surveillance Resources

Abstract

"Policy surveillance," the systematic tracking of policies of public importance, is an emerging practice within legal epidemiology that supports both scientific evaluation and the diffusion of policies the work for health. The emergence of policy surveillance as a distinct practice has been gradual. Although there is a long tradition of "50 state surveys" in public health, the use of scientific methods to create datasets of legal variables suitable for use in evaluation research has emerged in the last twenty years as a result of sustained research funding for legal evaluation in key areas, most notably alcohol and tobacco control. In contrast to "traditional" legal research, policy surveillance entails tracking policies over time, and the use of systematic quantitative or qualitative coding to create scientific datasets.

This report describes the results of a panel of experts who requested PHLR to conduct a scan identifying currently available policy surveillance portals and 50 state surveys of public health law. Our process scanned over 10,500 individual internet search results, returning over 160 individual policy surveillance resources created in the past four years. Many of these resources are static surveys that are updated either not at all or inconsistently, with different levels of supporting documentation, and across a broad range of health-related topics. This represents a significant investment of resources in policy surveillance and demonstrates the need for standards and protocols that more efficiently allocate the resources used to conduct policy surveillance.

Keywords: 50-state survey, policy surveillance, public health law research