The law and emergencies: surveillance for public health-related legal issues during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

R.I. Weiss, K.L. McKie and R.A. Goodman

American Journal of Public Health, 2007, vol. 97, issue S1, S73-81

Abstract: Law influenced every aspect of the public health response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, from evacuation orders, to waivers of medical licensing requirements, to the clean-up of public health threats on private property. We used public health surveillance of news reports to identify and characterize legal issues arising during the disaster response in 5 Gulf Coast states. Data collected from news reports of the events in real time were followed-up by interviews with selected state legal and emergency management officials. Our analysis indicates the value of surveillance during and after emergency responses in identifying public health-related legal issues and helps to inform the strengthening of legal preparedness frameworks for future disasters.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2006.104240

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2006.104240_7

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.104240

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().