Joan dela Cruz is a student of the 2025-2026 LL.M. program in National and Global Health Law and an O’Neill Institute Global Health Law Scholar. She is from the Philippines.
She specializes in the intersections of local governance, public health, and human rights law. Her recent work includes institutionalizing the Healthy Public Food Procurement Policy with the Department of Health, pioneering Southeast Asia’s first Calorie Labeling Ordinance in Quezon City, generating baseline data on the sodium consumption of Filipinos, and advocating for localized Road Safety Codes that earned international recognition for creating some of the safest schools in the country. She also worked with the United Nations to advance sustainable food systems in agricultural landscapes in island ecosystems and key biodiversity areas, and to establish a national framework for human rights cities in the Philippines.
Earlier in her career, she served as a close-in aide to the late Secretary Jesse Robredo at the Department of the Interior and Local Government, where she helped co-develop landmark housing policies for on-site and in-city housing for informal settler communities in Metro Manila, and advance governance reforms in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
She earned her J.D. from the Ateneo de Manila University School of Law with Second Honors. She is a lecturer at the same university on Gender and the Law, and Development and the Law.