Professor of Public Health Law and Ethics
Director, Public Health Law Network - Western Region
Director, Public Health Law and Policy Program
Affiliate Professor, Global Health, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Affiliate Faculty, School of Public Affairs
Through scholarship, teaching, and applied projects, James Hodge delves into multiple areas of health law, public health law, global health law, ethics and human rights. Professor Hodge teaches Health Law, Ethics, and Policy, Public Health Law and Ethics, and Global Health Law and Policy at the College of Law. In September 2010, he was named Director of the Public Health Law Network - Western Region, one of five centers nationally funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Western Region office provides extensive technical assistance and other services to public health lawyers, public health officials, practitioners and others across 11 states. Professor Hodge also directs ASU’s Public Health Law and Policy Program, a leading academic center of scholarship and service in public health law and policy nationally.
Professor Hodge is a prolific scholar, having published more than 100 articles in prestigious journals of law, medicine, public health and bioethics, as well as serving as editor of two symposium issues of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics on global and public health law. In 2009, as President of the Public Health Law Association, he co-chaired the development of the national public health law conference sponsored by RWJ Foundation, and is presently leading an effort at the College of Law to host the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics’ annual health law professors conference in June 2012.
The recipient of the 2006 Henrik L. Blum Award for Excellence in Health Policy from the American Public Health Association, Professor Hodge has drafted (with others) several public health law reform initiatives, including the Model State Public Health Information Privacy Act, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, the Turning Point Model State Public Health Act, and the Uniform Emergency Volunteer Health Practitioners Act. His current and prior funded projects include extensive work on (1) emergency legal preparedness (for which he serves as a national lead for the Public Health Law Network); (2) the study of how laws support the use of health impact assessments in the United States, with support from the PEW Charitable Trusts; (3) the legal framework underlying the use of volunteer health professionals during emergencies via a multi-year project for the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS); (4) the compilation, study, and analysis of state genetics laws and policies as part of a long-term NIH-funded project; (5) historical and legal bases underlying school vaccination programs, funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); (6) international tobacco policy for the World Health Organization; (7) legal and ethical distinctions between public health practice and research for the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE); (8) legal underpinnings of partner notification and expedited partner therapies, funded by CDC; and (9) public health law case studies in multiple states.
Professor Hodge is a national expert on public health emergency legal and ethical preparedness and public health information privacy law and policy. His work on these and other topics has been cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers, social media cites, and prestigious journals including Science, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and theAmerican Journal of Public Health. He is a current and prior member of several expert committees of the Institute of Medicine, a current member of CDC Director’s Advisory Committee on Policy, and an editorial board member of the AMA’s Journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. Professor Hodge advises numerous federal, state, and local governments on public health law and policy issues, and lectures extensively on diverse topics domestically and internationally in locations including Sydney, Australia, Toronto, Canada, Barcelona, Spain, and Geneva, Switzerland.
Before joining the College of Law faculty in 2009, Professor Hodge was a Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and a Core Faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He remains a Senior Scholar at the Centers for Law and the Public’s Health: A Collaborative at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, for which he previously served as Executive Director.
