Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law & Policy

UCLA’s Health Law and Policy Program, in partnership with ChangeLab Solutions, the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity, and the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine, is pleased to present Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy. This initiative brings together scholars, advocates, and policymakers to develop, disseminate, and implement innovative strategies for securing justice, valuing human dignity, and empowering communities to address the structural and social determinants of health.

The Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives Initiative fosters theory, practice, and action on health justice. Our focus is on applying critical perspectives—including critical race theory, Lat Crit, ClassCrit, black feminist theory, feminist legal theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and more—to the most pressing challenges in health law and policy. We have a big-tent vision of health law and policy, encompassing public health, the social determinants of health, health care, bioethics, and global health.

We aim to encourage health law and policy scholars, advocates, workers, and justice movement activists to engage more deeply with critical perspectives. We also hope to encourage scholars, advocates, workers, and activists from various critical perspectives who have not previously engaged in the health law and policy sphere to do so as part of this project.

The Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy Initiative Co-Chairs are Lindsay F. Wiley, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Brietta Clark, and Seema Mohapatra

Sponsors

Three logos are in this image: The Institute for Healing, Justice & Equity; Change Law Solutions; and, the Satcher Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine

What is Health Justice?

Upcoming Health Justice Events

Future Health Justice Initiative events TBA.

Past Health Justice Events

  • 2022 JLME Symposium

    A special open-access symposium issue on Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy was published in the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics in March 2023.

    The symposium was edited by Health Justice Initiative Co-Chairs Lindsay F. Wiley, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Brietta Clark, and Seema Mohapatra.

    Authors included Sabrina Adler, Aziza Ahmed, Courtney Anderson, Yael Cannon, Alejandra Caraballo, Robert Chang, Andrea Freeman, Charlene Galarneau, Keon Gilbert, Jasmine Harris, Angela P. Harris, Kim Libman, Medha Maklouf, Greg Miao, Katie Michael, Jamila Michener, Pratima Musburger, Aysha Pamukcu, Tomar Pierson-Brown, Addie Rolnick, Patrick Smith, Nicole Tuchidna, Ruqaiijah Yearby, and Tina Yuen.

  • 2022 Workshop

    Our October 2022 workshop, hosted at UCLA’s Luskin Conference Center, featured may of the authors in the 2022 JLME symposium issue: Sabrina Adler, Aziza Ahmed, Courtney Anderson, Yael Cannon, Alejandra Caraballo, Robert Chang, Andrea Freeman, Charlene Galarneau, Keon Gilbert, Jasmine Harris, Angela P. Harris, Kim Libman, Medha Maklouf, Greg Miao, Jamila Michener, Pratima Musburger, Aysha Pamukcu, Tomar Pierson-Brown, Addie Rolnick, Patrick Smith, Nicole Tuchidna, and Ruqaiijah Yearby. Several commentators enriched the discussion: Devon Carbado, Lauren Clark, Christine Cordero, Daniel Goldberg, Thalia González, Yvonne Mariajiminez, Ilan Meyer, Xavier Morales, and Lauren van Schilfgaarde. Conference co-chairs Brietta Clark, Seema Mohapatra, Lindsay Wiley, and Ruqaiijah Yearby were also in attendance, along with additional representatives of community organizations and funders and the UCLA faculty.

    Workshop participants expressed many variations on the core themes of respect for community, partnership between scholars and community advocates, and calls to action to achieve health justice. They highlighted the need for social movement organizers and scholars to work together to build more just political, economic, legal, and social systems. They emphasized that doing this work requires coming to terms with the racialized nature of these systems and repairing and redressing the trauma these systems have caused. They focused on the need to ground health justice in the work of building what people need to thrive. Building on other social justice movements, participants emphasized that lawyers and others with specialized expertise should be on call and ready to help, but that community should lead these efforts. Some participants pointed out that the commitment to community-led efforts must involve granting communities the right to make mistakes as they try to address historical traumas. A central theme of the workshop was a call to break down silos and work collaboratively with community organizations and scholars in areas beyond those traditionally understood as being within the purview of health law and policy, such as education, the criminal legal system, the immigration system, labor and employment law, housing, transportation, food justice, and political economy.

  • 2021 Blog Symposium

    In the fall of 2021, Ruqaiijah Yearby and Lindsay F. Wiley co-edited a Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law & Policy blog symposium hosted by the Bill of Health Blog of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

    The symposium featured posts by Mary Crossley, Jennifer Cohen, Rachel Rebouche, Aziza Ahmed, Sridhar Venkatapuram, Matt Lawrence, Katherine Macfarlane, Heather Walter-McCabe, Aysha Pamukcu, Angela P. Harris, Solange Gould, Daniel Dawes, Alexis Etow, Thalia Gonzalez, Monic McLemore, Wendy Epstein, Liz Tobin-Tyler, Joel Teitelbaum, Yael Cannon, Dayna Bowen Matthew, Charlene Galarneau, Medha Makhlouf, Keon Gilbert, Jerrell DeCaille, Liz McCuskey, Melissa Creary, Amber Johnson, Jamila Michener, Sara deGuia, Rachel Davis, and Kiran Savage-Sangwan.

  • 2021 Webinar

    In coordination with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Health Justice Initiative hosted a webinar in September 2021 featuring Ruqaiijah Yearby, Lindsay F.  Wiley, Aysha Pamukcu, Angela P. Harris, Charlene Galarneau, and Jamila Michener. Panelists discussed:  What does health justice mean? How does health justice relate to other frameworks for advocacy, teaching, research, and scholarship? And how should the community be involved in efforts to realize health justice?

  • 2020 Conference

    On October 2, 2020 American University’s Health Law and Policy Program hosted a virtual conference on Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy.

    Conference steering committee members included Emily Benfer, Brian C. Castrucci, Brietta Clark, Sarah de Guia, Gregg Gonsalves, Angela Harris, Nan Hunter, Dayna Bowen Matthew, Seema Mohapatra, Jamila Taylor, Lindsay F. Wiley, and Ruqaiijah Yearby.


    Conference Videos

    Welcome Remarks - watch video

    Panel 1: Securing Distributive Justice - watch video

    Panel 2: Valuing Human Dignity - watch video

    Panel 3: Empowering Communities - watch video


    Conference speakers included:

    Courtney Anderson, J.D.
    Associate Professor of Law
    Georgia State University College of Law

    Emily Benfer, J.D.
    Visiting Professor of Law
    Wake Forest School of Law

    Brietta Clark, J.D.
    Professor of Law and J. Rex Dibble Fellow
    Loyola Law School

    Sarah de Guia, J.D.
    Chief Executive Officer
    ChangeLab Solutions

    Maria R. Gonzalez Albuixech, MSPS
    Director, Communications and Immigrant Health
    Health Care for All

    Katherine Macfarlane, J.D.
    Associate Professor of Law
    University of Idaho College of Law

    Jamila Michener, Ph.D., MA
    Associate Professor, Co-Director, Cornell Center for Health Equity
    Cornell University

    Dian Million, Ph.D.
    Associate Professor and Chair, Department of American Indian Studies
    University of Washington

    Seema Mohapatra, J.D., M.P.H.
    Associate Professor of Law and Dean's Fellow
    Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

    Xavier Morales, Ph.D., MRP
    Executive Director
    The Praxis Project

    Lindsay Wiley, J.D., M.P.H.
    Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law and Policy Program
    American University Washington College of Law

    Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., M.P.H.
    Professor of Law and Executive Director and Co-Founder, Institute for Healing Justice and Equity
    Saint Louis University School of Law

Questions about Health Justice? Email healthlaw@law.ucla.edu.

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