ArticleAmerican journal of public health2009
The scientific basis for law as a public health tool.
Article in American journal of public health, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Policy Levers to Promote Access to and Utilization of Children's Mental Health Services: A Systematic Review.Administration and policy in mental health · 2019Pooled it
- Review of state laws for reporting or notification requirements for prenatal substance exposure of newborns to child protective or welfare services.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2026Article
- A scoping review of the literature on effectiveness of legislative and regulatory measures to prevent drowning.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Emerging Imaging Technologies in Forensic Medicine: A Systematic Review of Innovations, Ethical Challenges, and Future Directions.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- "International journal of health policy and management · 2025Article
- Legal and regulatory instruments for NCD prevention: a scoping review and descriptive analysis of evaluations in OECD countries.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Mapping and analysis of laws influencing built environments for walking and cycling in Australia.BMC public health · 2023Article
- A Legal Approach to Cancer Epidemiology in Public Health.Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention : APJCP · 2022Article
- Does mandatory reporting legislation increase contact with child protection? - a legal doctrinal review and an analytical examination.BMC public health · 2018Review
- Civil rights as determinants of public health and racial and ethnic health equity: Health care, education, employment, and housing in the United States.SSM - population health · 2018Article
- Iowa Dependent Adult Abuse Prosecutions From 2006 Through 2015: Health Care Providers' Concern.Journal of primary care & community health · 2017Article
- Evidence and Health Policy: Using and Regulating Systematic Reviews.American journal of public health · 2017Article
- Lighting and marking policies are associated with reduced farm equipment-related crash rates: a policy analysis of nine Midwestern US states.Occupational and environmental medicine · 2016Article
- The role of the law in reducing tuberculosis transmission in Botswana, South Africa and Zambia.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2016Article
- A Transdisciplinary Approach to Public Health Law: The Emerging Practice of Legal Epidemiology.Annual review of public health · 2016Review
- Article
- A narrative review of recent developments in knowledge translation and implications for mental health care providers.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2014Review
- Local legal infrastructure and population health.American journal of public health · 2012Article
- Estimating the cost of new public health legislation.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Systematic reviews are generating valuable scientific knowledge about the impact of public health laws, but this knowledge is not readily accessible to policy makers. We identified 65 systematic reviews of studies on the effectiveness of 52 public health laws: 27 of those laws were found effective, 23 had insufficient evidence to judge effectiveness, 1 was harmful, and 1 was found to be ineffective. This is a valuable, scientific foundation-that uses the highest relevant standard of evidence-for the role of law as a public health tool. Additional primary studies and systematic reviews are needed to address significant gaps in knowledge about the laws' public health impact, as are energetic, sustained initiatives to make the findings available to public policy makers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.