Introduction to Legal Mapping – for Facilitators

This collection of tools supports anyone interested in teaching public health practitioners about legal epidemiology. These tools are part of the Public Health Law Academy (PHL Academy), which provides a deeper understanding of the use of law and policy to improve population health outcomes.

Start with our Introduction to Legal Mapping training, then download and tailor the following resources for your specific audience:

• Facilitator’s Checklist
• Facilitator’s Guide, which provides specific instructions on how to customize this training for your audience
• Facilitator’s Script, which can be modified for your audience and speakers
• Slide Presentation, which can be adapted to your unique training content

About This Training

How can we measure the effect of a law on health outcomes?

Introduction to Legal Mapping is the second training in a three-part series on legal epidemiology. It builds on the first training, which introduced legal epidemiology — the scientific study of how laws affect health. This training explores a specific process for practicing legal epidemiology called legal mapping.

Legal mapping can help public health lawyers, policy analysts, epidemiologists, and public health practitioners determine what laws exist on a certain topic, collect the information needed to analyze what those laws say, and, ultimately, measure the effect of those laws on health outcomes.

This training was developed for students, public health lawyers, policy analysts, epidemiologists, and public health practitioners. It is intended for professionals or students who will directly implement legal epidemiology research tasks such as collecting, analyzing, and coding data.

Learning Objectives

Instructors can tailor these training materials to achieve the following learning objectives:

• Define what legal mapping is
• Explain the reasons for using legal mapping
• Discuss the two types of legal mapping studies
• Apply legal mapping principles to fill needs in public health practice