MARCH 24, 2020 UPDATE: At this time, we are putting plans for a face-to-face event in October 2020 on hold. We will continue to solicit proposals and will be in touch about our plans for one or more virtual events and/or a (possibly postponed) face-face-to-face event as they develop.
The Health Law and Policy Program at American University Washington College of Law, in partnership with ChangeLab Solutions, LLC, is soliciting proposals for conference presentations and discussions on Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words for a 15-minute conference presentation by a single presenter or a 1-hour conference discussion featuring up to four discussion leaders. Proposed presenters may submit abstracts for both formats for consideration by conference organizers. Submissions should be completed online at https://forms.gle/LyriL5kAejK6VXbV7. For more information, or to email a submission rather than completing the Google form, please send an email to health@wcl.american.edu with “Health Justice Conference” in the subject line.
Proposals will be accepted through April 13, 2020. Conference organizers will contact presenters in May 2020 to invite them to speak at a conference to be held October 1-2, 2020 in Washington, DC. ChangeLab Solutions is pleased to cover train or airfare and accommodations in our partner hotel for presenters traveling from outside the Washington metro area. Following the conference, presenters will be invited to submit proposals for articles and commentaries to be published in a symposium issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics in 2021.
We welcome the submission of an accompanying Statement Regarding Diversity indicating how the proposed presenter would bring diversity to the conference and journal issue relative to the historical profile of legal academic conference presenters and JLME authors, including with respect to disciplinary perspective (e.g., racial and ethnic studies, gender studies, law, public policy, nursing, medicine, epidemiology, ethics, sociology, economics), the race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sexual identity, or sexual orientation of the proposed presenter, the presenter’s work experience (e.g., academic, community organizer, social justice advocate, or health care worker), the extent to which the presenter works within community and social justice movements, or any other factor that the presenter would like to bring to the conference organizers’ attention. These statements will accompany anonymized submissions for consideration by the conference organizers.
This conference, and an accompanying symposium issue to be published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, will foster 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, 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 steering committee includes Brian C. Castrucci, Brietta Clark, Sarah de Guia, Gregg Gonsalves, Angela Harris, Nan Hunter, Dayna Bowen Matthew, Seema Mohapatra, Jamila Taylor, Lindsay Wiley, and Ruqaiijah Yearby.