Building evidence about legal triage and real-time decision-making during declared emergencies

The Foundation's program, Public Health Law Research: Making the Case for Laws That Improve Health, was designed to build the evidence for public health law and policy, translate research findings into practical tools to increase the support for and use of law by policy-makers and public health practitioners, and to translate findings to other fields and venues to improve and protect health.This grant project at Arizona State University will explore how legal and public health decision makers can use law in critical public health emergencies to protect populations from significant morbidity and mortality. The research approach will characterize legal triage as a decision-making process that can be deconstructed into four functional constructs: decision-making environments; decision-making frameworks; decision-support systems; and decision aids (or tools). Deliverables for this project will be made available on the Decision Theatre Web site (www.decisiontheatre.org) and include downloadable materials to build legal triage capabilities within public health systems; an exercise to measure program in legal preparedness that can be used by public health entities and legal professionals; results from the first prototype exercise around H1N1; and a performance evaluation instrument to assess decision making capabilities concerning critical legal issues in declared public health emergencies in other jurisdictions.

Grant Details

Amount Awarded $150,000.00

Awarded on: 11/5/2009

Time frame: 12/1/2009 - 5/31/2011

Grant Number: 67141