PLE and public health

UPDATED at bottom

One topic missing from the PLE research I’ve digested so far is the relation of public legal education to public health. In fact, for a long time I wondered if anyone had even thought much about this. Lately, I’ve begun finding a (very) few discussions of the connection.

There are at least two different connections worth exploring:

1. The impact of public legal education and awareness on health.

I’ve found two recent articles from the UK that treat this, both by lead author Pascoe Pleasence, Head of the UK Legal Services Research Centre. Pleasance and his research team conducted a random, nationwide survey and found significant links between civil legal problems and ill health. Among his conclusions are that

The promotion of public awareness of a broad range of legal rights/obligations (through both general public education and basic individual advice) should be regarded as both a justice and public health issue.

If you’re interested in learning more, PDFs of both articles are available online:

• P. Pleasance et al., Civil Legal Problems and Morbidity, 58 J. Epidemiology & Community Health 552 (2004) (link to PDF full text on right sidebar).
• P. Pleasance et al., The Health Cost of Civil Law Problems: Evidence of Links Between Civil Law Problems, Morbidity, and the Consequential Use of Health Services (unpublished 2006) (scroll to bottom for link to PDF full text).

2. Lessons from programming and other strategies in public health education.

I have yet to find much work in this area. That’s unfortunate, because my sense is that preventive medical information and public health education is a much bigger and more well-developed enterprise than public legal education. In the United States, for instance, there is a national professional organization for public health educators, SOPHE, but no real national network of public legal education providers whatsoever. The only notable recognition of the public health education field that I’ve found in the PLEI literature is this, describing a comprehensive educational strategy for new parents, from Susan McDonald’s article The Role of PLEI in Povery Law Services, 19 J.L. & Soc. Pol’y , 43 (2004):

One example to look to his health care. For example, health practitioners (nurses in the hospital, public health nurses, midwives, family doctors) record their educational work with newborns and their parents. The baby’s medical file contains a checklist of issues that are discussed at different checkups . . . .

For new parents, there is also a plethora of information available in different formats: pamphlets, books, videos, workshops, resource centres with public health nurses available to answer questions, and phone lines.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who’s encountered any other work in these areas. And as I find other materials on the topic I will post them here.

UPDATE: I’ve discovered that the public health education field has at least one journal, the International Quarterly of Community Health Education. Just from browsing the article abstracts available here, it seems that public health education research could indeed offer insights to public legal education providers. Here are some selected titles:

• Christine Ahmed, Bridging the Gap Between Community Health and K-12 Schools
• Stephanie L. McFall et al., A Qualitative Evaluation of Rural Community Coalitions
• Suruchi Sood et al., Reaching the Underserved: Measuring the Impact of a Community Media Intervention
• Desmond C. Ajoko, The Process of Involving High School Students in Developing Reproductive Health Education Materials in Ibadan, Nigeria

As I expected, while the public health educators have their own, health-specific issues, they are also dealing with issues common to public legal education as well. After all, both groups are trying to equip often disadvantaged people with information and skills for managing their day-to-day lives.