Building a Local Policy Agenda for Communicable Disease Control: Identifying strategies and legal tools for prevention

Public health practitioners are increasingly exploring the potential for law and policy to contribute to efforts to promote and protect health in communities, especially within local health departments. One area that has not yet seen as much focus on developing policy, systems, and environmental change strategies is communicable disease control. With the increased attention on communicable disease control that has been driven by such widely publicized issues as the threat of emerging infectious diseases like Ebola and the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis and measles, it is critical that communicable disease control practitioners not only continue to focus on the core issues of surveillance and response, but also look toward employing additional efforts aimed at prevention in communities. This presentation discusses the work of the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to build and implement a local policy agenda for communicable disease prevention using available legal tools, such as health officer orders, regulations, local ordinances, and state laws.  The process of creating a policy agenda to guide prevention activities is described, which includes determining priority subject areas for communicable disease control, identifying crosscutting themes unifying the agenda, and surveying upcoming opportunities for collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders. Examples are drawn from a range of issues in communicable disease prevention, from responding to the changing technology environment amid static regulation of public health laboratories to developing new strategies to improve immunization rates among vulnerable populations.