By Lori Craig
Prof. Alexander Capron will study the effectiveness of legal measures to control tuberculosis in homeless shelters in a research project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Public Health Law Research (PHLR) program.
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| Prof. Alex Capron |
Capron, who holds the rank of University Professor at the University of Southern California and is an expert in health policy and medical ethics, and co-investigator Peter Kerndt, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Tuberculosis Control Program for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, received funding for an 18-month-long project. Launching this month, their investigation seeks to identify which legal mechanisms will best reduce TB cases among homeless people using emergency shelters.
“Our research involves an observational study of what can be described as a natural experiment,” Capron says. “We will measure certain outcomes — such as the implementation of screening new residents at shelters and implementation of tuberculosis protection protocols — in the 60 emergency shelters where compliance with the public health department’s guidelines for tuberculosis control in shelters is voluntary, compared with the 56 shelters that are required to comply with the guidelines under their contracts with the Los Angeles Homeless Shelter Authority.”
While some cities, like San Francisco, require TB screenings, Capron says evidence is lacking whether compulsory or voluntary regimes are more effective. Capron says he and Kerndt will compare the two approaches with a third involving state workplace safety regulations aimed at protecting workers who are exposed to aerosol-transmissible diseases, including TB.
“This will be a true interdisciplinary study, involving other colleagues at the public health department and in the USC Keck School of Medicine from epidemiology, biostatistics, public health, and nursing,” says Capron, who spent the past six months serving as a Network for Public Health Law Scholar-in-Residence at the department.
The project is one of nine short-term and time-sensitive studies on specific laws or regulations and the development of legal datasets recently funded by PHLR. The grants total nearly $1.1 million. Other projects will analyze the effectiveness of laws on distracted and inattentive driving to reduce traffic injuries; assess the public health impact of laws and ordinances regulating paid sick leaves on preventing and controlling infectious diseases; and analyze the impact of prescription drug monitoring programs in reducing the epidemic of drug abuse.
For more information on this project and PHLR, visit www.phlr.org.
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