Recognizing the increased demand for public health law skills within the public health workforce, ChangeLab Solutions, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducted a pilot program to increase knowledge of law among public health students. In partnership with a team of curriculum consultants, ChangeLab Solutions developed and piloted a curriculum across eight public health programs that consisted of six modules which focused on defining public health law and explaining its role in shaping health outcomes and inequities. Faculty members that piloted the modules found students had an increased knowledge of public health law concepts after completing the modules. Faculty members also experienced several barriers that might hinder effective delivery of the curriculum. Integration of public health law concepts into public health coursework within SPPH is one method of increasing students’ preparedness and capacity to use legal tools in addressing health outcomes and inequities.

The 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) marked a critical juncture in the area of Indigenous rights. As a nonbinding agreement, its adoption is at the discretion of each state, resulting in significant state-level variation. Importantly, within-state variations remain underexplored. These differences are potentially significant in federal, decentralized countries such as Canada. This article examines why some provinces and territories lead in implementing the key principles embedded in UNDRIP, whereas others have dragged their feet. We collected 230 Canadian regulations introduced at the subnational level between 2007 and 2023, and assessed the impact of three key variables (i.e. political ideology, resource politics and issue voting). We found that none of these variables explained within-state variations on their own. To further explore the role of these variables, we subsequently compared two provinces at different stages of the UNDRIP implementation spectrum (Québec and British Columbia).

There is strong evidence that children are particularly vulnerable to the persuasiveness of marketing, and that their exposure to marketing of unhealthy food products influences their preference for and consumption of these products(1). In New Zealand (NZ), marketing is self-regulated by the industry-led Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ASA has two relevant codes, the Children’s Advertising and Food and Beverage Advertising Codes; however, product packaging is omitted. We investigated child-appealing marketing techniques displayed on packaged food products in NZ. We also assessed the potential impacts of different nutrient profiling systems to inform future policy design to restrict child-appealing marketing on food products in NZ. This research was conducted using the 2023 Nutritrack dataset, which contains data collected via photographs of packaged food products available in major NZ supermarkets. We focused on product categories that were shown to have a high prevalence of child-appealing marketing in a similar Australian study(2): confectionery, snack foods, cereal bars and breakfast cereals (n=2015 products). The images of products within these selected categories were assessed and coded using the “Child-appealing packaging” criteria developed by Mulligan et al.(3). Mann-Whitney U tests were used to assess differences in nutrient composition between products with and without child-appealing packaging, using information extracted from Nutrient Information Panels. In addition, the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion (NPSC) and the World Health Organization Nutrient Profiling Model for the Western Pacific Region (WHO WPRO) were applied to all food products identified as appealing to children to determine which products would be ineligible to be marketed to children under these two potential policy options. Overall, 724 (35.9%) of the 2015 products examined had child-appealing packaging. Snack foods had the highest proportion of products with child-appealing packaging (44.5%), followed by confectionery (39.3%), cereal bars (23.3%) and breakfast cereals (22%). The most common type of child-appealing marketing technique used was “child-appealing visual/graphical design of package” which featured on 513 food items. Overall, compared with products without child-appealing packaging, the median content of energy, protein, total fat, and saturated fat was lower, and the median content of sugar and sodium was higher in products with child-appealing packaging (all p<0.05). Of the 724 products that were found to have child-appealing packaging, 566 (78.2%) would be considered ineligible to be marketed to children when assessed using the NPSC and 706 (97.5%) would be ineligible using the WHO WPRO.Our research shows that a considerable number of food products available in New Zealand supermarkets are using marketing techniques on their packaging that appeal to children. If policies were introduced to reduce the use of child-appealing marketing on food packaging, the WHO WPRO would provide the highest level of protection for children.

The fields of archaeology and museology are working to encourage and enforce research methodologies and policies that center reciprocity and respect among archaeologists, institutions, and Native Nations. This shift in approach is grounded in part by the inclusion of the Duty of Care clause in the revised NAGPRA regulations and partly by a revised awareness of ethical standards. Policy-level changes around research access are the most impactful but can also be the most challenging to initiate. In this article, we address shifts in both institutional research policies and researchers’ approaches and practices that actively incorporate Native perspectives. The framework presented was developed as a complement to the Indigenous Collections Care Guide and is grounded in case studies from three institutions that have changed their research policies. The resulting prompts, tips, examples, and challenges are provided for both researchers and institutions to evaluate research and access practices and how they intersect with Native perspectives. Seeking input and consent from Native Nations adds challenging layers to research, but the depth, quality, and impact of the research and the strengthening of relationships and trust with the communities significantly outweigh the extra time and effort.

The Making Care Primary (MCP) model represents a sharp shift in Medicare’s approach to primary care, yet its current design risks duplicating failures from prior alternative payment models. Our editorial suggests refinements to address these gaps. To prevent early provider dropout from MCP’s rigid track-based system, we propose a sliding-scale infrastructure payment model that adjusts based on practice needs rather than abrupt phase-outs. Given MCP’s reliance on community-based organisations (CBOs) for social determinants of health interventions, we also advocate for direct, outcomes-based contracts between providers and CBOs, ensuring accountability for patient outcomes rather than passive referrals. We recommend that MCP enforce data-sharing mandates for commercial insurers and Medicaid agencies, drawing from Washington State’s successful Multi-Payer Collaborative, to avoid payer disengagement that plagued previous multi-payer models. To expand beyond conventional quality measures, we propose integrating patient-centred outcomes from the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement, making sure MCP captures meaningful clinical impact. Finally, we propose programme adjustments frequently at two- to three-year intervals to refine risk adjustment methodologies. These approaches could enhance MCP’s sustainability, preventing the financial instability and misaligned incentives that undermined past value-based care initiatives.

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on plastic pollution are United Nations member states who will convene for the second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Geneva (INC5.2) 5-14 August, 2025 to negotiate a global plastics treaty. The Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty (‘The Scientists’ Coalition’) is an international network of independent scientific and technical experts who have been contributing robust science to treaty negotiators since INC1 in 2022. The Scientists’ Coalition established a series of working groups following INC5.1 in Busan, Korea 25 November – 1 December 2024. Each working group has produced science-based responses to the selected articles of ‘the Chair’s text’ (the latest version of the draft global plastics treaty text). This Letter to the Editor summarises those responses.

Plastics and climate change are inseparable issues, both materially and geopolitically. Plastics are derived almost entirely from fossil fuels and have an enormous greenhouse gas footprint. Aligning with the Paris Agreement requires rapid, dramatic decreases in plastic production, contravening the industry’s plans to continue expanding production. The oil, gas and petrochemical industry wields substantial power in both the climate and plastics treaty negotiations and has used that power to stymie progress in both. Rather than repeat the failures of the climate negotiations, plastics negotiators should seek to create a “plastics club” for ambitious action.

As negotiations on the Global Plastics Treaty progress, the extent to which reuse is embedded in the Treaty will serve as an indicator of its ambition to transform plastic systems rather than merely manage their waste outputs. Reuse is one of the most powerful yet underutilised interventions to achieve circularity, and is essential for reducing plastic production, lowering emissions and disrupting the dominance of single-use models. However, the current Treaty text reflects only limited and ambiguous references to reuse, often coupled with recycling, raising concerns that this cornerstone of circularity is at risk of being sidelined. This article argues that the Treaty’s effectiveness, both as a regulatory instrument and as a tool for transformation, will depend on whether it embeds the enabling conditions required to make reuse viable at scale. Drawing on recent research by the Global Plastics Policy Centre, we explore two core areas where progress is urgently needed: first, the limitations of setting numerical reuse targets without the underlying systems, infrastructure and regulatory clarity needed to implement them; and second, the persistent structural and regulatory barriers that prevent reuse systems from scaling. Without system-wide enablers, the Treaty risks repeating the common policy pattern of prioritising headline commitments over operational feasibility. Numerical targets, while politically attractive and symbolically important, do not create the conditions needed for sustained reuse uptake. Effective systems require regulatory mandates alongside design standards, infrastructure investment and mechanisms for tracking performance and ensuring compliance. At the global level, structural barriers include divergent regulations, inconsistent standards, a lack of harmonised definitions and metrics and financing systems that favour single use. Extended producer responsibility schemes, still skewed towards recycling, have not adequately incentivised reuse. The Treaty presents an opportunity to address these barriers through common standards and policy signals that support reuse as the default. To realise reuse as a transformative pillar of circularity, the Treaty must go beyond aspiration and commit to building the conditions under which reuse can thrive, which would shift plastics governance towards systems that value durability, more equitable responsibility and reform.

Here we examine interactions between centralised and devolved employment policy and welfare in Scotland, Wales and England, taking a qualitative approach to gain a street-level perspective. This paper’s twin aims are to challenge the privileging of methodological nationalism in the study of welfare regimes and to offer a substate alternative through a street-level perspective. In the context of prevailing trends towards activation measures and mixed economies of welfare across Western Europe, the UK’s work first approach and categorisation as a Liberal welfare regime of minimal provision is complexified using a devolved policy context.

Our findings on cross-jurisdictional interactions show devolved employment programmes in Scotland and Wales actively reshaping welfare delivery in ways that resist the UK’s historically centralised approach. We contribute to a growing body of literature on substate welfare regimes with significant implications for the privileging of methodological nationalism in the study of work and welfare.

How do we persuade historians and history students to adjust from their familiarity with longer forms of writing to embark on a policy brief exercise? On the one hand, the need for humanities scholars to engage with policy-makers is arguably more acute than ever, given the gravity of policy choices we face; however, on the other hand, some will understandably resist what they see as the dangers of humanities becoming instruments of centers of policy-making power. We find, in a case study of historians and history students in Australia, that there is considerable willingness to tackle the task of a policy-brief, and willingness to engage with policy-making more broadly. Students who have taken on the task of writing policy briefs have said that it hurts, but they have also found it to be a rewarding and worthwhile exercise. Established scholars have done similarly, arguing that the time is ripe for more humanities scholars to take up the challenge.

As surrogacy grows, many states and countries are enacting or considering relevant regulations, while others oppose it. Ethical, legal and policy questions arise: how to balance the rights of various kinds of parents (e.g., heterosexual and same-sex couples and single individuals) against the rights and well-being of surrogates. Concerns include risks of exploitation, autonomy, benefits of enabling prospective parents to create loving families, and mitigating possible harms through regulations. Though a few instances of abuse have been reported in developing countries, these do not appear to have occurred in developed countries, where robust regulations exist. The limited data available on surrogates in general (i.e., including traditional and non-commercial surrogacy) do not suggest exploitation or trafficking. In 2021, New York State enacted robust regulations allowing commercial surrogacy. Subsequent competing bills have sought to loosen or enhance certain restrictions. These regulations may be a model for commercial surrogacy regulations elsewhere, but certain ethical, legal and policy questions remain (e.g., where to draw the line to prevent trafficking). Additional data and exploration of these challenges are crucial

Alcohol use disorder is a global public health concern and national policies are often implemented to help control alcohol consumption and related consequences. Increasingly, many countries are resorting to transient (short-term) alcohol policies which are implemented for a restricted period of time as an action plan for particular events or health-related issues. The COVID-19 pandemic emphasised the need for rapid decision-making and short-term fast-acting policies. This paper discusses contexts in which these transient policies are used and highlights the need for impact measurement and global exchange of experiences. This is particularly important to avoid gaps that the global alcohol industry could utilise to expand its influence and market.