Monday, December 30, 2024
12/30/2024
Recipients funded under the Notice of Funding Opportunity CDC-RFA-PW-24-0080 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use their expertise in legal epidemiology, policy evaluation, teaching, and training to build capacity among transdisciplinary teams of legal epidemiologists within state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments (HDs) to better understand the impact of law on population health. The purpose of this project is to improve the overall capacity and performance of the public health system by serving legal epidemiologists who can promote and support the effective use of laws and policies to reduce health disparities in the populations they serve. Legal epidemiologists are a transdisciplinary group of professionals within public health systems who apply scientific methods to evaluate the impact of laws and policies on health, or those who desire to do so. Legal epidemiology stands as a cost-efficient and effective intervention for advancing the public health systems, but only if the health workforce has the capacity to wield it. By building policy and programmatic capacity across this workforce segment that target measurable outcomes, Applicant will strengthen public health law and legal epidemiology competencies in the workforce, including increased capacity to identify and prioritize public health law needs, establish and maintain partnerships within and across workforce sectors to leverage and share resources, effectively deploy and enforce laws and policies, and monitor and evaluate laws and policies to improve health. Applicant's CBA work in Year 1 will measurably 1) increase availability of and access to CBA services and products for people carrying out legal epidemiology functions, and 2) increase use of CBA services and products by legal epidemiologists, thereby increasing their competency to identify, analyze, monitor, and evaluate the impact of laws, policies, and programs. Intermediate outcomes during the period of performance will include an 1) increase in the implementation and sharing of recommended standards, policies, programs, and practices through the emergence and growth of a legal epidemiology community of practitioners to support and leverage bourgeoning workforce capacity, and an 2) increase in the breadth and depth of available evidence demonstrating the impact that laws and policies have on health outcomes. To achieve these outcomes, Applicants will conduct the following activities: A. Create a National Legal Epidemiology Competency Center (LECC) to provide tools, training, resources, technical assistance, and technological infrastructure to increase legal epidemiology competencies in HDs. Chief activities related to building CBA in Year 1 will include: 1) deploying and publicizing LECC portal that consolidates and expands access to foundational materials; 2) providing virtual and in-person training opportunities; and 3) creating a toolkit tailored to the unique needs of legal epidemiologists working in HDs. The utility of all CBA activities and outputs will be optimized through partnerships and strategic communications efforts. Future work can expand each output to support additional outcomes and activities as priorities shift and new needs emerge. B. Lead legal epidemiology demonstration projects by providing direct capacity-building assistance to legal epidemiologists to address and strengthen policy and programmatic needs of HDs. Key activities in Year 1 include: 1) recruiting legal epidemiologists to join the LECC's Community of Practice (CoP), 2) working with the CoP to identify policy and programmatic priorities, and 3) conducting legal epidemiology demonstration projects with the CoP. Future work can expand the CoP to recruit more sites, which would enrich and provide strategic direction to additional content and modes of delivery of the LECC. As more practitioners join, a mixed-methods design can be used to identify emerging priorities.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).