Each of the papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: (1) laws and legal authorities for public health practitioners; (2) legal competencies public health practitioners and legal and policy decision makers need for use of these laws and authorities; (3) crossdisciplinary and cross-jurisdiction coordination of law-based public health actions; and (4) information on public health law best practices. Collectively, they are referenced as the "white papers."Our purpose is to offer action options that will help to improve the legal competencies of public health practitioners and policy decision makers with respect to drafting, interpreting, implementing, and enforcing laws and regulations that are relevant to the effective prevention and control of obesity. The accompa-nying assessment paper provided a foundation for this agenda by first establishing that legal competence for obesity prevention and control is important for both health professionals, who with proper training can effectively interject health considerations into decision-making processes, and non-health professionals involved with relevant policy and legal work, who with proper training can effectively incorporate health considerations into their decisions. 1 The paper acknowledges apparent gaps in not only health professionals' understanding of legal tools relevant to obesity but also policymakers' recognition of how obesity relates to their decisions. In addition, this paper set forth specific competencies each of these two broad groups should have to strengthen their legal preparedness for obesity prevention and control.To improve these competencies within and among the relevant professionals in these two broad groups, our framework identifies critical knowledge, skills, values, analytical approaches, and communication strategies. We also suggest mechanisms by which public health professionals can interact with professionals

No abstract

In recent years, various revelations about government malfeasances have highlighted the vulnerability of civil society actors who work on surveillance by intelligence agencies. Simultaneously, new technologies and overburdened state oversight bodies clarify how relevant citizen scrutiny of intelligence is. Both of these factors have led to the emergence of scrutiny by civil society actors as a research subject. This paper contributes to such scholarship by presenting data collected through surveys addressed at journalists and professionals from civil society organisations (CSOs) in France, Germany, and the UK to comparatively characterize the forms, scope, and constraints of the scrutiny they perform. Indicated differences across countries highlight variances in the practices of civic intelligence oversight. These variances indicate that there is room to manoeuvre for civic forms of holding intelligence agencies to account, counteracting the primacy of security and the secrecy of intelligence. Yet, similarities of civic oversight practitioners’ perspectives across all three countries are also distinct and informative; in particular, across all three countries, journalists and CSO professionals who work on surveillance by intelligence agencies worry they are under surveillance themselves and express dissatisfaction with safeguards at work.