Poirier Mathieu J P, Viens A M, Penney Tarra L, Rogers Van Katwyk Susan, Astbury Chloe C, Lin Gigi, Nanyangwe-Moyo Tina, Hoffman Steven J
Global Strategy Lab, Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
School of Global Health, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
J Epidemiol Community Health. 2022 Jun 15;76(9):828-32. doi: 10.1136/jech-2021-217202.
Although the theory and methods of legal epidemiology-the scientific study and deployment of law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and prevention of disease and injury in a population-have been well developed in the context of domestic law, the challenges posed by shifting the frame of analysis to the global legal space have not yet been fully explored. While legal epidemiology rests on the foundational principles that law acts as an intervention, that law can be an object of scientific study and that law has impacts that should be evaluated, its application to the global level requires the recognition that international laws, policies and norms can cause effects independently from their legal implementation within countries. The global legal space blurs distinctions between 'hard' and 'soft' law, often operating through pathways of global agenda setting, legal language, political pressures, social mobilisation and trade pressures to have direct impacts on people, places and products. Despite these complexities, international law has been overwhelmingly studied as operating solely through national policy change, with only one global quasi-experimental evaluation of an international law's impact on health published to date. To promote greater adoption of global legal epidemiology, we expand on an existing typology of public health law studies with examples of policymaking, mapping, implementation, intervention and mechanism studies. Global legal epidemiology holds great promise as a way to produce rigorous and impactful research on the international laws, policies and norms that shape our collective health, equity and well-being.
尽管法律流行病学（将法律作为影响人群疾病和伤害的原因、分布及预防的一个因素进行科学研究和运用的学科）的理论和方法在国内法背景下已得到充分发展，但将分析框架转向全球法律空间所带来的挑战尚未得到充分探讨。虽然法律流行病学基于这样一些基本原则，即法律可作为一种干预手段，法律可成为科学研究的对象，而且法律的影响应当得到评估，但其在全球层面的应用需要认识到，国际法、政策和规范能够独立于其在各国的法律实施而产生影响。全球法律空间模糊了“硬法”和“软法”之间的区别，常常通过全球议程设定、法律语言、政治压力、社会动员和贸易压力等途径，对人员、地点和产品产生直接影响。尽管存在这些复杂性，但国际法在研究中大多仅被视为通过国家政策变化发挥作用，迄今为止，仅有一项关于国际法对健康影响的全球准实验性评估发表。为推动全球法律流行病学得到更广泛应用，我们以政策制定、映射、实施、干预和机制研究为例，对现有的公共卫生法研究类型进行了拓展。全球法律流行病学有望成为一种手段，用以对塑造我们集体健康、公平和福祉的国际法、政策和规范开展严谨且有影响力的研究。
