Our legal team, working across our campaigns and programs, provides expert technical assistance, resources and capacity strengthening for lawyers, advocates, governments and public health professionals working to pass, implement, defend and enforce evidence-based policies in their countries. Our legal support also includes countering legal opposition and engaging in international law forums to promote healthier communities worldwide.
We provide technical support to advocacy efforts to advance evidence-based public health measures at country and global levels. Our team provides expert and multidisciplinary guidance in navigating complex legal frameworks, from global health law to human rights law. We also provide key guidance on legal risk analysis, legal landscaping and other relevant mechanisms to promote policy change. We contribute our legal expertise to locally led advocacy processes, bringing global and regional lessons learned to targeted country needs.
We provide legal support and assistance to governments in their public health programs and legal strategies. This work includes comprehensive analyses of relevant legal frameworks, advice and recommendations on legal reforms, drafting legislation and guidelines and support to governments in progressing legal reforms through the legislative process. We also support governments with amicus briefs strategies assisting courts and provide technical assistance to government litigation.
In many of our programs, litigation efforts are used as a legal mechanism to foster policy change, defend laws and regulations from legal challenges, promote industry accountability, or actively require regulatory government action. We stand with our civil society partner organizations working on the ground in their legal battles to protect public health. Our litigation support helps ensure that the law is a powerful tool for advancing equity and justice across all the public health areas we work on.
We help lawyers, advocates and public health professionals to build and strengthen their capacity to use the law as a tool for positive change. We undertake seminars, workshops and trainings for individuals and organizations on best practice law and policy development across all our programs. We help our partners strengthen legal and advocacy skills, and we promote knowledge sharing across the globe to enable more robust legal engagements in public health advocacy. These efforts also allow lawyers, organizations and individuals to connect with each other by building relevant legal networks and communities.
Most of the public health areas in which we work have opposing interests from private actors. When facing legal opposition from industry in policy development or implementation, including but not limited to legal challenges before courts, we provide support in countering legal arguments to defend human rights and the public interest as part of our advocacy campaigns.
International law and global standards are key to defending country-level public health policies. We actively participate in law fora to protect and promote mandatory legal standards that are supportive of our public health causes. Our engagement in these spaces supports our fight for healthier communities worldwide.
We have established legal networks promoting public health policies across the globe. These communities share our collaborative commitment to advancing public health through law and policy.
Our legal teams equip lawyers, advocates, organizations, scholars, researchers and public health professionals with a wealth of valuable resources to advance public health initiatives worldwide across the issues we work on. Legal resources inform evidence-based advocacy and are key to drive positive change in law and policy. In this section, a range of different tools can be found organized per each of our programs, in addition to cross-cutting legal resources.
This profile provides an overview of how our legal team works with lawyers, advocates, governments and public health professionals working to pass, implement, defend and enforce evidence-based policies in their countries.
A discovery tool of food laws and decisions aimed at reducing diet-related non-communicable diseases, and it is a joint initiative developed by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator and the O’Neill Institute.
This human rights database, a joint project of GHAI and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, contains human rights documents issued by international human rights treaty bodies and United Nations Special Rapporteurs relevant to our work areas related to food and nutrition and tobacco control.
The guide is a resource for public health advocates to plan, organize and implement effective advocacy using our proven, four-phase approach to achieve health policy outcomes.
