: The U.S. Justice system controls nearly 8 million young people and adults on any given day, and disproportionately touches the lives of minority and disadvantaged populations. The Network for Justice Health was established by Drs. Catherine A Gallagher and Faye S. Taxman at George Mason University to attend to the unmet public health needs of an underserved population. With the partnership of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Center for Outcomes and Evidence (COE), the Network for Justice Health will the goal of on-going open-access dissemination of conference-generated resources. The Network for Justice Health aims to create a global 'collaboratory'of researchers and policy makers addressing health and health care issues of justice-involved populations. The Network is built around these principles: 1) Mounting evidence suggests that individuals involved in the justice system have higher rates of unresolved physical and mental health disorders than their counterparts in the general population;2) The evidence-base has not been adequately developed to describe the prevalence of the problem, the practices and treatments needed to address the problems, nor the policies to support improvements in health outcomes, nor has the potential of existing evidence been fully realized;3) Initial studies demonstrate that the justice system does not provide adequate care to improve the overall functioning of this population;and, 4) Health care providers often do not have adequate evidence-based clinical guidelines for addressing and improving health and health-related outcomes (see, e.g., American Pediatric Association, 2001). This will move the field forward in establishing evidence-based guidelines for this medically complex and typically underserved population so that health and health-related outcomes may be improved. The anticipated conference related products may be divided into four components. The first product will be the generation of a research strategy across the relevant domains (defined below) and a timeline and grading scheme for assessing progress. The second set of products includes documentation and distribution of conference-related materials, including summaries of conference proceedings. Webinars will also be available to those unable to participate. Web-conferencing will also be available for post-meeting follow-up and ongoing committee meetings. A third set of products are aimed at the research and policy community, and include a series of invited articles in a special journal issue, a review article on evidence-based practice (EBP) for justice involved individuals by members of the Network for Justice Health such as co-directors Catherine Gallagher and Faye Taxman. The final will be an open-access, web-based resources for individuals around the country and globe. These will include a compilation of existing research and evidence on justice health topics, access to coded bibliographic information for rapid and free evidence searching, and automated mapping and graphing programming that will provide visual displays of knowledge areas and gaps across conditions, populations, and settings related to justice health. Support for three conferences is requested through AHRQ conference grants (February 23-26, 2010 in Phoenix AZ;February 22-25, 2011, Los Angeles;&February 21-24, 2012, Washington, D.C.)
The 8 million people controlled by the U.S. Justice system on any given day have much higher rates of unresolved physical and mental health disorders than their counterparts in the general population. The Network for Justice Health Conference will coordinate research on evidence based practices to combat these health disparities, identify high-priority areas of research, and develop open-access dissemination and training tools for decision-makers and care providers.
