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Teaching Health Law: Teaching Social Justice and Health: Professionalism, Ethics, and Problem-Solving in the Medical-Legal Classroom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2021
Extract
Our course on social justice and health began as an experiment between Roger Williams University School of Law and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. As a course for both law and medical students, it broke relatively new ground by focusing on the intersection between law and the social determinants of health and the ways in which lawyers and doctors might partner to address social and health disparities. The course blends professionalism, ethics, and problem-solving by using case studies that raise practical challenges at the intersection of poverty, law, and health. This kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching presents many challenges and rewards, which I discuss in this essay.
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References
National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, Medical-Legal Partnership Network Site Survey (March 2009), available at <http://www.medical-legalpartnership.org/sites/default/files/page/2009%20MLP%20Site%20Survey%20Report.pdf>(last visited August 4, 2010).(last+visited+August+4,+2010).>Google Scholar
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There has also been a change in faculty since we began the joint course. Brown medical school faculty Dr. Alicia Monroe and Dr. Jay Baruch helped me to develop the course in 2003. After Dr. Monroe left Brown Medical School in 2008, Dr. Patricia Flanagan joined us as a teaching partner for the course.Google Scholar
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This is not to suggest that there were no models for joint medical-legal courses. There is a long history of bringing medical and law students together in the classroom. See, for example, Naitove, B. J., Comment, “Medicolegal Education and the Crisis in Interprofessional Relations,” American Journal of Law & Medicine 8, no. 3 (1982): 293–320, at 304; Wilkins, D. B., “Redefining the “Professional” in Professional Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Professionalism,” Law Contemporary Problems 58 (1995): 241–258. Nonetheless, the focus of our course on the role of law in the social determinants of health and medical-legal partnership was new. Thus, we found no ready syllabi to help guide us.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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By “ethics” I mean both how legal and medical practice are shaped and governed by professional ethical rules, and also the moral ethical issues that arise for lawyers and doctors in practice. The ideas and expertise of one of my co-teachers, Dr. Jay Baruch, an emergency room physician and director of the ethics curriculum at Brown medical school, has been critical to our integration of these types of ethical issues into the course.Google Scholar
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We focus our course and case simulations on issues of child health. Medical-legal teaching can just as easily be geared toward health law issues affecting adult populations, such as those with HIV/AIDS or cancer, or the elderly.Google Scholar
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For example, a survivor of domestic violence has shared her very personal story of the difficulties she found in both the health care and legal systems as she was deciding to leave her abuser and seeking custody of her children who were also abused.Google Scholar
For an example of how we teach the class on substandard housing and lead poisoning, see Tyler, , supra note 5, Part V.Google Scholar
The students do not give legal advice. They help families and individuals with budget planning to see if they may be eligible for a budget plan through the utility company and/or inform them of the classifications under the regulations for protected status. Utility company representatives are on-site and the students help advocate for their “clients” with the company representative.Google Scholar
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As part of the training, we also discuss and practice client counseling. I am grateful to Bonnie Roswig, Senior Staff Attorney at the Medical-Legal Partnership Project at the Center for Children's Advocacy in Connecticut, for introducing me to the utility clinic as an effective experiential learning experience for law and medical students in advocating for low-income individuals and families.Google Scholar
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The role of the law in public health can be understood both for the importance of legal rules in shaping population health as a whole and for understanding “that a particular legal rule or policy that may appear to have a positive impact on one population may have a very different impact on another.” Parmet, W., Populations, Public Health and the Law (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009): At 54. We explore how particular legal rules (or the failure to enforce certain legal rules) on behalf of particular populations may lead to health disparities.Google Scholar
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