Joan Dela Cruz is a fellow with the Center for Health and Human Rights at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Her research examines how law and governance shape global health, with a focus on gender, local food systems, and the prevention of noncommunicable diseases.
As a public health lawyer in the Philippines, she helped develop pioneering health policies to promote healthier food environments and prevent noncommunicable diseases. Her work included institutionalizing the Healthy Public Food Procurement Policy with the Department of Health, advancing Southeast Asia’s first Calorie Labeling Ordinance, generating baseline data on the sodium consumption of Filipinos, and supporting localized Road Safety Codes that received international recognition for creating some of the country’s safest school environments.
Her international development work examines how legal and governance frameworks can address the social determinants of health, particularly through sustainable food systems, human rights, and decent work. She has supported the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in advancing sustainable food systems in island ecosystems and key biodiversity areas, and worked with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to develop the national framework for Human Rights Cities in the Philippines. She has also collaborated with Citizens UK on a worker-led organizing guide for the Living Wage movement in the Philippines.
Earlier in her career, Dela Cruz served as a close-in aide to Secretaries Jesse Robredo and Mar Roxas at the Department of the Interior and Local Government. She contributed to national governance reforms aimed at improving the delivery of basic services at the local level. Her work also included supporting landmark policies on housing for informal settler communities in Metro Manila, and governance reforms in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. This experience continues to inform her research on how effective local governance can improve health outcomes.
Dela Cruz earned her LL.M. (with Distinction) in National and Global Health Law from Georgetown University Law Center, where she also received a Certificate in Food and Drug Law. She earned her J.D. (Second Honors) from Ateneo de Manila University School of Law and her A.B. in Development Studies (Honorable Mention) from Ateneo de Manila University. She serves as a lecturer at her alma mater, where she teaches Gender and the Law, Development and the Law, and Labor Law and Social Legislation.