Academics

Dickinson Law professor awarded joint appointment with College of Medicine

Medha D. Makhlouf, assistant professor of law and founding director of Dickinson Law's Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, received a joint appointment as assistant professor, Department of Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine—part of central Pennsylvania’s only academic medical center that also includes Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Children’s Hospital, and Penn State Medical Group. Credit: Justin Kulp / Penn State. Creative Commons

CARLISLE, Pa. — Medha D. Makhlouf, assistant professor of law and founding director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State’s Dickinson Law, received a joint appointment as assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine — part of central Pennsylvania’s only academic medical center that also includes Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Children’s Hospital, and Penn State Medical Group.

An experienced advocate for vulnerable populations, Makhlouf will strengthen collaborations between Dickinson Law and the College of Medicine in teaching, research and services. She will draw upon her expertise in health law to create new interprofessional educational and advocacy opportunities for faculty and students.

“This joint appointment recognizes Professor Makhlouf’s commitment to the shared educational and research missions of Dickinson Law and the College of Medicine,” said Dickinson Law Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law Danielle M. Conway. “I am excited to witness firsthand the positive collaborations with faculty and students in both institutions that will occur as a result of this appointment.”

Makhlouf earned her juris doctor degree from Yale Law School. Prior to joining Dickinson Law, Makhlouf was a staff attorney at the Central West Justice Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she oversaw daily operations of the organization’s medical-legal partnerships with area community health centers and hospitals. She also was an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP, where she focused on complex business litigation and served as immigration team leader for the firm’s pro bono medical-legal partnership clinic at the Dorchester House (now DotHouse Health Inc). Makhlouf previously provided legal services to refugees and asylum seekers at Asylum Access Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador and as a Yale Public Interest Fellow at the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project in Boston.

As founding director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic — a collaboration between the Law School and Penn State Health that provides low-income patients and patient-families with critical legal assistance — Makhlouf oversees law students working with health care providers and advocates from Penn State Health, Sadler Health Center, and other community organizations in central Pennsylvania to reduce health disparities and improve health in vulnerable communities through medical-legal advocacy.

In addition to teaching in the Clinic, Makhlouf teaches courses on law and medicine and public health law. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of health, law and poverty, and her scholarship has been published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Public Affairs, Brooklyn Law Review, and Indiana Health Law Review. She was named a 2017 Health Law Scholar at the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics (ASLME) Health Law Professors Conference, where she presented her work examining the issue of disparities in access to health care in immigrant communities living in the United States through a social justice lens.

Last Updated September 3, 2020

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