Scott Burris, JD is a Professor of Law and Public Health at Temple University, where he directs the Center for Public Health Law Research. His work focuses on how law influences public health, and what interventions can make laws and law enforcement practices healthier in their effects. He is the author of over 250 books, book chapters, articles, and reports on issues including urban health, HIV/AIDS, research ethics, and the health effects of criminal law. His work has been supported by organizations including the Open Society Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, and the CDC. He has served as a consultant to numerous U.S. and international organizations, including WHO, UNODC, and UNDP. He has been a visiting scholar at RegNet at the Australian National University and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Cape Town Law School. He is a recipient of a American Public Health Law Association Health Law Section Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Jay Healey Health Law Teachers Award of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. Professor Burris is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (AB) and Yale Law School (JD). Burris has done extensive public health law development work for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He founded and directed the foundation’s Public Health Law Research Program, a $20 million program that funded over 70 empirical research grants between 2009 and 2016. He was the founding director of the Policies for Action research program. His team works closely with the CDC’s Public Health Law Program to expand the field of legal epidemiology. Burris is the premier methodologist in the emerging field of legal epidemiology. With Alex Wagenaar, he is the editor of Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods (Wiley, 2d ed 2023). His textbook, The New Public Health Law: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Practice and Advocacy (Oxford, 2d dd. 2023) is widely used in public health law classes. Professor Burris is an Honorary Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health and a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the oldest professional medical organization in the United States.
