2023 THEMES

The European Regional Conference on Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH2023 Europe) will present a multi-focused Conference Program that addresses three main areas:

• Substantive issues: all the particular issues in which the police-public health partnership is important.
• Organisational issues: how to best achieve optimal and sustainable partnerships and collaborations.
• Reflection and methodological issues: creating a science of the public health and law enforcement intersection.

The key theme for LEPH2023 Europe is ‘Together towards resilient communities’,  acknowledging the continued existence of challenges to personal and social safety and wellbeing, and the superior contribution of integrated approaches and responses to their prevention and amelioration.

As with previous LEPH conferences, LEPH2023 Europe aspires to contribute to the achievement of the Rio+20 Conference’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to overcome marginalisation.

• LEPH2023 Europe will help promote healthy lives and well-being leading to peaceful and inclusive societies by an integrated approach of law enforcement and public health (SDG 3)
• LEPH2023 Europe will help build police-public health partnerships that are effective, accountable and inclusive (SDG 16)

The achievement of effective public health outcomes is often the result of intersecting law enforcement and public health policy that underpins integrated practice. Law enforcement, especially through the activities of police forces, has a crucial but often unacknowledged role in the protection and promotion of public health. This means that there is an inadequate approach to research and investigation of ways in which law enforcement can be most effectively engaged and be most effective in carrying out their public health role.

As for all LEPH conferences, marginalised communities are an important priority theme of LEPH2023. Marginalisation is the enemy of security and health. Too often around the world police have been agents of marginalisation. Inclusive policing works to overcome marginalisation, by according equal or greater attention and support to populations at increased risk because they are excluded and have unequal access to justice.

Public health is an active partner in crime prevention as well as a range of other complex social issues like mental health, infectious diseases, road trauma, community and domestic violence, alcohol and drugs and disaster management. As well as providing ‘State of the Art’ updates from national and international experts in both police and public health, LEPH2023 will bring together experience and examples of successful partnership initiatives from the widest range of settings.

Overarching theme:    Community resilience

Major themes:             

• Trauma-informed approaches to policing, childhood adversity and early intervention: What does trauma-informed awareness mean for practice?
• Other law enforcement actors’ contribution to public health: Public Prosecutors, Coroners, Magistrates and others
• Law enforcement and mental health issues: prevention and response
• LE, drugs (incl alcohol) and harm reduction: People who use drugs, policing & legal frameworks, drug related deaths and harm reduction
• Police and other First Responder mental health and wellbeing
• Health security and emergency preparedness: crises and catastrophes, including pandemics
• Neurocognitive disorders: cognitive and behavioural barriers to communication e.g. epilepsy, Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, Acquired/Traumatic Brain Injury
• Child protection and Sexual abuse, Exploitation
• Violence: Gender-based violence, violence prevention, domestic violence, homicide prevention
• Racial/ethnic disparities in access to health and involvement with criminal justice
• LEPH education, incl LEPH PhDs
• Modern slavery, forced migration and human trafficking

Examples of Other Topics within a particular theme (by no means exhaustive)

• Infectious disease – epidemics
• Defenders – the role of legal defenders in public health; holistic defence
• LEPH and migration, Roma and travelers
• Epidemiological criminology
• Acid attacks
• Human trafficking
• Female genital mutilation
• Incarceration – prisons as public health institutions
• Road safety and trauma
• Sentinel events analysis
• Sex work
• Suicide prevention
• Hate crime and the new nationalism
• Marginalisation as enemy of security and health: inclusive policing to overcome marginalisation
• Information and data sharing
• Tobacco control