Dear John,

Join us on Wednesday, June 5, for our theme issue briefing on Reimagining Public Health. Authors featured in this special issue of Health Affairs will present their work, engage in discussions, and answer questions on this important topic.

In their Ahead of Print article, Michelle Mello of Stanford University and coauthors assess how public health legal powers have become increasingly constrained during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Using federal and state court decisions between March 2020 and March 2023, the authors determine that legal challenges made against public health officials indicated deference to religion, destabilized vaccination law, and strong pushback against agency discretion.

Mello and coauthors conclude that “courts often disrupted long-held assumptions about the scope of public health powers.”

Health Affairs Scholar has been accepted for indexing in PubMed Central, a free full-text archive of thousands of biomedical and life sciences journals maintained by the US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Inclusion in PubMed Central, the leading source of open-access articles, will bring additional visibility to articles published in the journal.

Center For Medicare And Medicaid Innovation Should Test An Alternative Payment Model For Hospital Nursing

Olga Yakusheva and Robert Longyear

Potential Implications Of Federal Regulations For Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence

Priya Radhakrishnan et al.

Equity Through Episode-Based Payment: Features Of The Transforming Episode Accountability Model

Joshua M. Liao et al.

Recent Developments In No Surprises Act Implementation

Sheela Ranganathan

Pregnancy, Parenting, And Prison: The Dire Need For Reform In The Post-Dobbs Era

Ella van Deventer et al.

The Need For Holistic Policy Thinking In Medicare

Brian C. DeBusk et al.

The (Un?)intended Consequences Of COVID-19-Era Judicial Decisions And New Public Health-Related Laws

Sabrina Adler et al.

We Need National Policies For Voice-Based Telepsychiatry

Aleyah Johnson et al.

Health Care's Role In Ending Homelessness

Vanessa Davis et al.

Too Little, Too Late: Initial Launch Prices And Access To Cures For Medicaid Enrollees

Stacie B. Dusetzina

Health Affairs launched its second annual You’re A Health Policy Wonk If… contest and the deadline for submissions is quickly approaching.

The premise is simple. Finish the statement “You’re A Health Policy Wonk If…”

Besides honor, the first-place winner will receive a free online journal subscription for a year.

Remember to submit by May 31.

Check out last year's submissions to get inspired before submitting your entry!

A Health Podyssey: Christopher Hoover on How Vaccine Targeting in California Improved Equity

Health Affairs' Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil interviews Christopher Hoover of the California Department of Public Health on his recent paper that explores how California's COVID-19 vaccine equity policies helped to avert cases, deaths, and hospitalizations in affected communities.

Health Affairs This Week: Following the Rules: Nursing Facilities' Staffing and Organ Transplants

Health Affairs' Jeff Byers talks with Marianne Amoss about recent federal rulemaking activity over nursing facility staff levels and CMS' proposed mandatory kidney transplant value-based model.

The June 2024 issue of Health Affairs focuses on the topic: "Reimagining Public Health."

In this issue, contributors set out to answer an important question: What might it look like to reimagine public health care and the systems that support the health of the community?

You are invited to join us on Wednesday, June 5, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (Eastern), for a virtual forum at which authors will present their work, engage in discussions, and answer questions on important issues.