West Virginia University College of Law professor Valarie Blake published a new article in The Milbank Quarterly . The article, titled "Legal Remedies to Address Stigma-Based Health Inequalities in the United States: Opportunities and Challenges", is co-authored with Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. It appears in volume 97, issue 2 of the journal.
From the abstract:
Stigma is an established driver of population-level health outcomes. Antidiscrimination laws can generate or alleviate stigma and, thus, are a critical component in the study of improving population health.
Currently, antidiscrimination laws are often underenforced and are sometimes conceptualized by courts and lawmakers in ways that are too narrow to fully reach all forms of stigma and all individuals who are stigmatized.
To remedy these limitations, we propose the creation of a new population-level surveillance system of antidiscrimination law and its enforcement, a central body to enforce antidiscrimination laws, as well as a collaborative research initiative to enhance the study of the linkages between health and antidiscrimination law in the future.