14th Annual Health Law Symposium: Viewing Health Justice Through the Lens of Public Health Crises

Presented in conjunction with Annals of Health Law & Life Sciences

Friday, October 30, 2020
9:00 a.m. – 1:45 p.m.

About the Symposium

This year's Symposium will explore the impact that public health crises such as COVID-19 have on vulnerable populations, will consider how public and private sector responses address these populations’ needs, and look upstream to identify how social determinants of health made these populations vulnerable prior to such crises.

Video

Watch a video recording of the symposium:

Watch Video

Symposium Format

This event will be held virtually in a synchronous format using Zoom.

Cost & CLE

This program has been approved for 3.75 hours of General MCLE credit, including 1.25 hours of Professional Responsibility CLE credit. CLE is complementary this year.

About About Annals of Health Law & Life Sciences

Twice yearly (Winter and Summer) the Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy publishes Annals of Health Law & Life Sciences, The Health Policy and Law Review of Loyola University Chicago. Annals contains articles of general interest in health law, which are deemed by the editors to make a contribution to the teaching, practice, and/or public policy surrounding health law. Past volumes have focused on corporate, regulatory, bioethical, and pharmaceutical issues, as well as patient rights and advocacy. Through this publication, health law students are afforded the opportunity to edit a law review article.

Advance Directive is an online publication of Annals of Health Law & Life Sciences, which is also published twice yearly (Fall and Spring). Similar to Annals, Advance Directive publishes articles that provide insight into the divergent areas of health law. Advance Directive allows health law students to write short articles regarding current health law topics, which are often at the crux of debate amongst legislators, practitioners, and academics.

Symposium Presenters

Professor L. Kate Mitchell, Director of the Health Justice Project

Moderator: Session 1 – A Closer Look: COVID’s Disproportionate Impact on Specific Populations

Professor Mitchell joined the Health Justice Project in 2017 after more than 16 years practicing and teaching in the areas of poverty law, children’s rights and health law. Professor Mitchell has extensive experience representing children and families in access to health care and public benefits, special education, housing and family law, juvenile delinquency and prison condition cases, and other general civil law matters.  She has also been involved in local, state, and national policy work in the areas of access to healthcare, education, and juvenile justice. Before joining Loyola’s faculty, Professor Mitchell was a clinical teaching fellow with the Pediatric Advocacy Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. She has also worked as the Legal Director of the Toledo Medical Legal Partnership for Children, Policy Director at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and as a staff attorney at Legal Aid Chicago.  Professor Mitchell has presented at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of topics including interprofessional education and interdisciplinary advocacy, special education, juvenile competency standards, and Medicaid regulations impacting child access to healthcare.  Her primary research interests relate to the intersection of poverty, health and legal advocacy; interdisciplinary approaches to advocacy; access to healthcare; and the impact of school disciplinary practices on children with disabilities.  Professor Mitchell received her BA in Sociology, from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin and her JD, from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago.  Professor Mitchell has been admitted to practice law in Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio and Michigan. 

Medha D. Makhlouf, The Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson Law

Presentation Title: Health Care Sanctuaries 

Medha D. Makhlouf is an Assistant Professor at Penn State’s Dickinson Law, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine, and the Founding Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic. The Clinic aims to reduce health disparities and improve health in vulnerable communities through collaboration with medical providers and public health practitioners. Currently, the Clinic focuses on representing immigrants with legal needs relating to access to health-supporting public benefits. Professor Makhlouf’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. She also teaches Public Health Law and Law & Medicine. Prior to entering academia, Professor Makhlouf worked in legal services (in the United States and abroad) and at a large law firm. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University.

Camila L. Strassle, National Institutes of Health Department of Bioethics

Presentation Title: Prisons and Pandemics

Camila Strassle, BA, is a first-year law student and Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University. Previously, she was a predoctoral bioethics fellow with the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health. Her recent publications include “Workplace Wellness Programs: Empirical Doubt, Legal Ambiguity, and Conceptual Confusion” (William & Mary Law Review), “A Proposed Framework for Patient Engagement Throughout the Broader Research Enterprise” (Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research), “Fair Subject Selection in Cystic Fibrosis Trials” (Journal of Cystic Fibrosis), and “Disability and Health in the Age of Triage” (Harvard Law Review Blog).

Seema Mohapatra, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

Presentation Title: Think of the Kids: Health Justice for Children During and After the Pandemic

Professor Seema Mohapatra is a tenured associate professor of law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, Indiana. She has taught a wide variety of courses including Torts, Introduction to Health Care Law and Policy, Bioethics and the Law, Genetics and the Law, Public Health Law, Women's Heath and the Law, Professional Responsibility, and Business Organizations. Professor Mohapatra is an expert in biotechnology and the law, public health law, reproductive justice, and health equity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has written about various issues including structural racism, mask mandates and racial discrimination, mask mandates and disability law, immunity passports, advance directives, health justice, and online teaching. Professor Mohapatra is regularly consulted by the media for her expertise. Her scholarship was featured recently in Vox and the Indy Star. She is the co-editor of Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten (with Lindsay F. Wiley) (forthcoming 2021, Cambridge University Press). She is also a co-author of the forthcoming third edition of the textbook Reproductive Technologies and the Law (with Judith Daar, I. Glenn Cohen, and Sonia Suter) (forthcoming 2021, Carolina Academic Press).

Ani Satz, Emory University School of Law

Presentation Title: Principles and Pandemics: Disability Discrimination Through the Lens of COVID-19 

Ani B. Satz, a regulatory health lawyer and philosopher, is an expert in health and disability law, policy, and ethics. Satz is Professor of Law and Public Health; Leader of the Project on Health Law, Policy & Ethics; Affiliated Professor of Business; Global Health Fellow; and Senior Faculty Fellow of the University Center for Ethics at Emory University. She currently is serving a three-year administrative term as President-Elect, President, and Immediate Past-President of the University Senate and Chair-Elect, Chair, and Immediate Past-Chair of the University Faculty Council. She holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Monash University (completed at Princeton University), where she was a Fulbright Postgraduate Research Fellow. Satz is widely published in books, peer-reviewed journals, and law reviews, and her research has been featured by Time Magazine, CNN, and National Public Radio among other media outlets. She has taught ten different courses at Emory, including Health and Disability Law, Torts, and Genetics, Ethics & the Law. Her research and teaching are united around a central theme of the disjunction between the legal and lived experience. Satz's most recent scholarship examines the role of regulation in shaping health care outcomes, guarding the medical privacy of injured workers, and disability discrimination in health care. Before coming to Emory, Satz lectured at Yale University in the Philosophy Department and the Ethics, Politics and Economics Program, as well as at Monash University Medical School. She also clerked for the Honorable Jane R. Roth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Satz served as 2017 Chair of the Section on Animal Law, 2014 Chair of the Section on Law, Medicine and Health Care, and 2009 chair of the Section on Disability Law of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2016, Satz became an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Professor Nadia Sawicki, Co-Director of the Beazley Institute for Health Care and Policy

Moderator: Session 2 – Managing COVID: From Hospital to Community

Nadia N. Sawicki is a Georgia Reithal Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Co-Director of Loyola's Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy. Her areas of expertise are torts, health law, and bioethics. Prof. Sawicki's research addresses issues at the intersection of these three fields, and she has published widely on subjects including law's role in shaping the informed consent process; the challenges of protecting patients' rights to effective medical care while also accommodating health care providers' conscientious beliefs; tort law's limitations in protecting the rights of patients making end of life decisions; and the state’s role in enforcing ethical norms in medicine. 

In 2020, Prof. Sawicki was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. She has previously served as a member of the American Bar Association’s Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law, and co-chair of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities’ Law Affinity Group.

Charles Holland, St. Bernard Hospital

Presentation Title: A 30-Year Life Expectancy Gap, Then Came COVID! The Experience of a Safety-Net Hospital

Charles Holland is President and Chief Executive Officer of St. Bernard Hospital, a safety-net community hospital that proudly serves residents of Chicago’s South Side. Mr. Holland assumed leadership of the Hospital on January 1, 2013. He has served in various administrative roles at the hospital since 1998. He is a member of the hospital’s Board of Trustees and in May 2019 he was designated as a representative for the Congregation of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph with Catholic Health Partners/Catholic Health International, the sponsor of St. Bernard Hospital.

Since joining the senior leadership team of St. Bernard Hospital in 1998, Mr. Holland has been instrumental in helping to build the stature of the hospital as an institutional community development leader. He led the work on Bernard Place, the Englewood hospital’s 77 home affordable housing project, which won the prestigious Richard H. Driehaus Award for Outstanding Non-profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project in 2004. He has guided the development of pivotal programs such as the Pediatric Mobile Health Unit and the St. Bernard Hospital Dental Center. As the leader of St. Bernard’s strategic planning efforts, Mr. Holland led the Senior Management Team in the development of the hospital’s newly opened 70,000 square foot state of the art Ambulatory Care Center.

Mr. Holland takes an active role in the healthcare needs of Englewood and serves on the Board of Directors of the South Side Healthcare Collaborative. 

Mr. Holland earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Akron, and Master of Arts degrees in social service administration from the University of Chicago and in health law from Loyola University, Chicago. In 2011 he completed the Ministerial Leadership Preparation Program of the Francis Cardinal George Center for Ministerial Development, a program designed to prepare lay leaders to assume leadership of Catholic healthcare organizations.

Iliana Mora, Cook County Health Ambulatory Services

Presentation Title: Responding to COVID: Cook County Health Ambulatory Services

Iliana Mora is the Chief Operating Officer of the Cook County Health Ambulatory Services, where she is responsible for developing and implementing strategy for the health system’s ambulatory services, and leading ambulatory clinical and business operations, programs and functions for the health system. Prior to joining Cook County Health, Ms. Mora worked at Chicago’s Erie Family Health Center for 14 years as the Manager of Community Relations and Planning and more recently, the Chief Operating Officer. Ms. Mora was named a 2014 Honoree for Who’s Who in Chicago Hispanic Business and has received many more distinctions. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from The George Washington University, and received her Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois, as well as a certificate from the Executive Health Care Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Jessica Mantel, University of Houston Law Center

Presentation Title: Utilizing Community Integrated Health Teams During Public Health Crises 

Professor Mantel is an associate professor at the University of Houston Law Center and co-director of the Health Law & Policy Institute.  Her research explores how law and policy influence the provider-patient relationship and efforts to address the social determinants of health. Before coming to the University of Houston, she was an attorney at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Gwendolyn R. Majette, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law

Presentation Title: Falling Through the Cracks - Access to Post -Acute Care for People of Color During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Gwendolyn Roberts Majette is an Associate Professor of Law at the Center for Health Law and Policy at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.  Prof. Majette received her undergraduate degree from Emory University, her J.D. from George Washington University School of Law, and her LL.M. in Global Health Law, with distinction from Georgetown University Law Center. 

Professor Majette’s scholarship focuses on patients' rights, delivery system reform, health disparities, global health, and health care reform.  Her scholarship has real world impact.  It has been relied on by the United States Commission for Civil Rights, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization, and is cited in one of the leading health law texts.  She has also been quoted in the national media and appeared as a legal expert on local newscasts regarding health care reform.

Professor Majette has diverse experience working on health care and delivery system reform matters as an expert advisor to the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Provider Price Variation Commission, as a member of the executive team for a state-based exchange, and as a legislative fellow working on Medicare, Medicaid, and Health Care Reform policy with the United States Congress.

Professor Karen Shaw, Director of Graduate Legal Studies

Moderator: Session 3 – Structural Racism: Systemic Problems & Solutions

Karen Alicia Shaw is the Director of Graduate Legal Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and is responsible for centralizing the administration, including the development and implementation of policies and procedures, for campus based graduate law programs. Professor Shaw is also an adjunct professor at Loyola teaching legal writing courses that allows JD and international LLM students to read, analyze, and apply the law to various health care fact scenarios.  She also teaches a socio-legal research and writing course on rule of law and international development issues to attorneys and legal professionals from around the world as well as an interdisciplinary writing and communications course featuring health literacy and health care equity. Professor Shaw is currently completing an SJD degree through Loyola’s Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy. Her research focuses upon federalism and the interrelations between federal and state governments in addressing issues in health care policy - particularly for the needs of low-income individuals. Prior to Loyola, she served as a program dean for a small business college and taught health care policy and medical law and ethics courses. Professor Shaw holds a BA degree in Communication Studies with minors in Business Administration and Technical Writing from DePaul University, a JD degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law where she was an associate editor for the Journal of Law and Commerce, and an LLM degree in Health Law from Loyola.

Craig Konnoth, University of Colorado Boulder School of Law

Presentation Title: Medical Stereotyping

Craig Konnoth, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Law School. An expert in health and civil rights law, Professor Konnoth teaches Health Law, Property Law and Sexuality and the Law. His publications have appeared or will appear in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, among others. He is also active in LGBT rights litigation, and has filed briefs in the Supreme Court, including Bostock, and the Tenth Circuit on LGBT rights issues. Professor Konnoth is formerly a Deputy Solicitor General with the California Department of Justice, where his docket primarily involved cases before the United States Supreme Court, in addition to the California Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He holds a J.D. from Yale, and an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge. He clerked for Judge Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ruqaiijah Yearby, Saint Louis University School of Law

Presentation Title: Now or Never: Eradicating Structural Racism in the Government’s Pandemic Response

Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., M.P.H., is a Professor of Law and member of the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University.  She is also co-founder and Executive Director of SLU’s Institute for Healing Justice and Equity as well as Co-Principal Investigator of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant entitled, “Are Cities and Counties Ready to Use Racial Equity Tools to Influence Policy?”  Using empirical data, her research explores the ways in which discrimination prevents racial minorities, women, and the economically disadvantaged from attaining equal access to quality health care, resulting in health disparities. Her work has been cited in The Oxford Handbook of Public Health (2019) and Mark Hall, et al, Health Care Law and Ethics, (9^th ed 2018). She earned her B.S. in Honors Biology from the University of Michigan, M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Mary Crossley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Presentation Title: Prisons, Nursing Homes, and Medicaid: A COVID-19 Case Study in Health Injustice

Mary Crossley is a Professor of Law, John E. Murray Faculty Scholar, and Director of the Health Law Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.  Widely recognized for her scholarship in disability and health law, Professor Crossley has written broadly on issues of inequality in health care financing and delivery and has published articles in numerous law journals, including Columbia Law Review, Iowa Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review.  She teaches courses on Health Law, Health Justice, Healthcare Compliance, and Torts. Crossley was appointed Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2005 and served as Dean from 2005-2012, focusing her leadership on initiatives relating to curricular reform, innovation programming, and promoting diversity.  In 2013 she was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Public Health Law Scholar in Residence. In 2016, she was elected to the ALI.

Yael Cannon & M. Gregg Bloche, Georgetown University Law Center

Presentation Title: American Injustice: A Hurry-Up Health Justice Agenda for Lawyers to Address Racial Disparities

Yael Cannon is an Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and legal director of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance, a cross-campus medical-legal partnership engaging in research, service, and academic efforts to train the next generation of attorneys, doctors, and healthcare professionals to advocate to improve social determinants of health for low-income families.  Professor Cannon also established in 2017 and directs the Health Justice Alliance’s law clinic, which brings law and health students and professionals together to provide holistic legal services in a range of civil poverty law practice areas to secure housing, education, public benefits, and family stability for patients living in poverty in Washington D.C.  Professor Cannon previously taught clinical poverty law courses and doctrinal courses at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where she was an Associate Professor.  She began her law teaching career as a Practitioner-in-Residence and Acting Director of the Disability Rights Law Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law.  Prior to teaching, Professor Cannon was an attorney at the Children’s Law Center’s medical-legal partnership providing legal services at Washington, D.C. pediatric clinics and engaging in policy advocacy on behalf of low-income children and families.  She is a co-author of the textbook Special Education Advocacy and the treatise AIDS and the Law, and has authored articles in law journals and other periodicals, including a study of trauma rates of youth in New Mexico’s juvenile justice system.  Her research focuses on the ways in which the law can protect the social and economic rights of children and families living in poverty to ensure their health and well-being.  Professor Cannon graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School and summa cum laude from the University of Maryland with B.A. degrees in History and African American Studies.

M. Gregg Bloche, M.D., J.D., Professor of Law at Georgetown University  

M. Gregg Bloche, M.D., J.D., is Professor of Law at Georgetown University and author of The Hippocratic Myth: Why Doctors Are Under Pressure to Ration Care, Practice Politics, and Compromise Their Promise to Heal.  He is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on health law and policy.  Bloche’s writing has appeared in a wide range of venues, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs and the Journal of the American Medical Association; leading law reviews; and the New York Times, Washington Post, & other media outlets.  He has also been a frequent commentator in national broadcast media.  He was a health care advisor to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, as well as the presidential transition, and he spoke frequently for the campaign as a “surrogate.”  Bloche has held teaching and research appointments at the University of Chicago, UCLA, and Columbia law schools, as well as the Brookings Institution, and the Harvard School of Public Health.  He is a graduate of the law and medical schools at Yale, and he completed a residency in psychiatry at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.  His awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.  Bloche serves on several editorial boards and has advised governments and non-profits in the U.S. and abroad on a wide range of health policy issues.  He lives in Washington, D.C.

Professor John D. Blum, Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Closing Remarks & Reflections

Prior to coming to Loyola, Professor John D. Blum held positions on the faculties of Penn State and Boston University, and was a teaching fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. In the spring of 1993 he was a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall and the University of British Columbia Faculties of Law under the auspices of the U.S.-Canada Fulbright program. He has served as a consultant to USAID in Indonesia where he worked on the development of a curriculum in public health law for use in schools of public health. He has many years of experience in health law and policy, and is very active in research in these areas, with a particular focus on legal issues in medical quality assurance. Professor Blum is also an adjunct professor of medical humanities in Loyola's Stritch School of Medicine, Department of Medicine.