Prerequisites: This seminar is open to LLM students by permission.

Exam Type: No Exam

Public Health Law and Policy is an overview of the historical factors and the major law and policy decisions that have shaped health and public health care in the United States. We will look at the structure and functioning of both public and private systems with a focus on how they work (or do not work) for populations facing discrimination and marginalization, including people of color, people living with low incomes, people living with HIV, hepatitis, mental illness, or other chronic health conditions, and people of transgender or gender non-conforming experience). We will explore prominent current debates in health care and in public health with an eye on implications for public policy. And we will analyze federal and state law and policy proposals that aim to tackle some of the sector’s most entrenched problems, scale and sustain innovations, and otherwise improve the health and wellbeing of people across the country.

The seminar incorporates and encourages active discourse, dialogue, and debate from all perspectives about U.S. health and public health law and policy choices. At the end of the term, students will have the opportunity to write about and present to the class their own innovative solution to address an access to care or public health challenge.

Some seats are reserved for students in the fall Health Law and Policy clinic. Students who claim a clinical seat in this course will be enrolled in this course by the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs. If a student in a clinical seat drops the fall Health Law and Policy clinic, they will also lose their reserved seat in this course. Please note that there is an early drop deadline for fall clinical students in this course.