It has now been 3 months since I completed the Global Health Law LL.M. Program and exactly a month since I started working as a post-graduate Fellow at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law (the Institute). The program was a great foundation for all the skills one can acquire in the field of health law. Working as a student Research Assistant for the Institute, I was able to understand how far lawyers and policymakers could go to impact public health. Now that I have joined the Institute as a Law Fellow, I found it an excellent chance to apply the skills and the knowledge I acquired from my academic and practical exposures. The number of projects and programs we have at the Institute are important lenses that show what needs to be done in domestic and international health law spheres; I see the Institute as the best place to understand and discover several roles we could play in the field of public health.
I started my new position with supporting the Global Health Law and the O’Neill Colloquium courses in the Global Health Law LL.M. program for the Fall 2019 Semester.This is my second chance to learn and benefit from the experiences of highly qualified speakers and professors who will be teaching on different topics the courses will cover. The LL.M. program equips Health Law graduates with the necessary knowledge and skills they need to approach and support public health while working for public and private sectors, NGOs, public private partnerships, etc.
The O’Neill Institute also offers LL.M. candidates to work as Research Assistants (RAs), which is a great chance to get the practical sense of what policies and laws (as a means of enforcing policies) can change in health. RAs assist teams at the Institute with their works under different projects. One of the projects LL.M. students can work on is the Global Health and Human Rights Database, where cases from different jurisdictions and regional and International Human Rights courts are summarized and published on. The Global Health Law LL.M. Program welcomes the next generation of global health lawyers next Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019, and I’m excited to share with the next class my experience of doing the LL.M. Program, working as an RA, and now as a Fellow for the Institute.
Because Institute Fellows have the opportunity to work on different matters under different projects and programs, I see it as the best chance of learning about the works we are accomplishing and building my career.
WHO, UNDP, UNAIDS, and IPU with Georgetown University and The Lancet will be co-sponsoring a side event at United Nations General Assembly taking place in September. The side event will launch the Legal Solutions Network for Universal Health Coverage (UHC-LSN). This network will provide an evidence-based legal support for stakeholders at different levels who are working on UHC laws. The Institute is organizing the event and researching prior partnerships, works, and achievements on UHC and analogous subject matters to produce a brief that will be presented at the side event. Supporting this work is also an interesting experience that I’m having so far. I hope and plan to engage in a number of interesting works at the Institute with the friendly workspace and colleagues for the remaining time of the year as well.
