Health Law Program

J.D.-M.P.H. Program

Instituted in 2003 by the School of Law, the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the dual degree in public health, offered in conjunction with the Department of Public Health Sciences, offers concentrations in generalist practice and research and in health policy, law and ethics. The M.P.H. program features close collaboration with the federal Centers for Disease Control and with state and local public health offices in Virginia.

Program Details

J.D.-M.D. Program

Designed to educate the next generation of health leaders, the J.D.-M.D. program allows students to complete law and medical degrees in six years, instead of the seven years normally required if the degrees were pursued separately. Students spend the first three years and the summer of year five in classes at the School of Medicine, and years four and five at the Law School. In the final year, one semester is spent in each school. Students are required to secure admission separately to the School of Medicine and UVA Law through the normal admissions processes of the two schools. 

Program Details

Courses and Seminars

The following is a list of courses offered during 2022-25. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2022-23 is coded (23), 2023-24 is coded (24) and 2024-25 is coded (25). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong. 

After Dobbs (SC) (23)
Bioethics And Law Internship Seminar: Health Policy and Administration (23,24,25)
Bioethics and the Law Seminar (24,25)
Biotechnology and the Law (25)
Blood Feud (SC) (23,24)
Cannabis Legalization (SC) (24)
Current Topics in Law, Medicine and Society (SC) (23,24,25)
Disability Law (24)
Drug Product Liability Litigation Seminar (23,24,25)
Drug Product Liability Litigation: Principles and Practice (23,24,25)
Food and Drug Law (24)
Food Systems Law and Policy (23)
Forensic Psychology in Criminal Proceedings (24)
Genetics and the Law (SC) (24,25)
Genetics and the Law: Exercises in Rule-Making (SC) (23)
Health Care Marketplace: Competition, Regulation, and Reform (SC) (23,25)
Health Law Survey (23,24,25)
Law and Ethics of Biotechnology (23)
Law and the Social Determinants of Health (24)
Medicalization and the Law (23)
Mental Health Law (24)
Religious Freedom and Reproductive Rights (24)
Reproductive Ethics and Law (SC) (23,24,25)
Reproductive Rights and Justice (24)
Ten-Year Checkup of the Affordable Care Act (24)

Clinics

Health and Disability Law Clinic (YR) (23,24,25)

Centers and Organizations

Student Organization

Health Law Association
The Health Law Association is open to all law, LL.M., medical, graduate and undergraduate students. The group sponsors speakers and seminars in the health law field throughout the year and organizes social activities with medical and other graduate students.

Research Project

MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study
The public perception that mental disorder is strongly associated with violence drives both legal policy (e.g., civil commitment) and social practice (e.g., stigma) toward people with mental disorders. This study describes and characterizes the prevalence of community violence in a sample of people recently discharged from acute psychiatric facilities at three sites. 

UVA Organizations

Department of Public Health Sciences
By assembling a multidisciplinary team and combining the expertise of the basic clinical sciences of biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, health services research, and informatics, the Department aims to provide a better understanding of the relationships among biologic discoveries, patient and population characteristics, treatment options, public health interventions, systems, and outcomes.

Center for Health Humanities & Ethics
The Center for Health Humanities & Ethics is a diverse interprofessional community of scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose interests in the human dimensions of illness, health, and health care bridge clinical and social sciences, arts and humanities, ethics and law, philosophy and religion.

Center for Global Health
The Center cultivates and promotes interdisciplinary activities to support Global Health that involve the collaboration of departments, centers, as well as professionals and students from across the university. The Center is dedicated to alleviating diseases of poverty.

Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy
The Institute offers training, educational, research, and service programs in the areas of forensic psychiatry, forensic psychology, and mental health law. Affiliated with the University's Law School, School of Medicine, and its College of Arts & Sciences, the Institute has an interdisciplinary faculty of attorneys, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. Its Forensic Psychiatry Clinic performs clinical evaluations in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases. The Institute conducts training programs for the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services and provides continuing education for attorneys and judges. The institute also conducts extensive empirical and theoretical research in clinical criminology, forensic psychiatry/psychology, and mental health law and policy.

Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life 
The Institute fosters scholarship, education, and research in practical ethics. To this end, the Institute provides an intellectual home for faculty and students from across the University who wish to pursue interdisciplinary scholarship, research, and teaching on the complex ethical issues that underline contemporary professions, organizations, and public policy. Additionally, the Institute aims to connect, create and support programs in practical ethics throughout the University and thus create a model for ethics as an integral part of undergraduate, graduate, and professional education.

Center for Community-Based Health Equity
The Center for Community-Based Health Equity includes a group of behavioral and implementation scientists and staff who focus on the development, implementation, and sustainability of evidence-based behavioral interventions targeting cancer control priorities for rural communities.

School of Medicine
The School of Medicine is a nationally recognized, medium-sized school with balanced programs of undergraduate and graduate medical education and with biomedical research programs nationally recognized for their stature and productivity. Law students have the opportunity to interact with faculty, residents, and students from many departments in the medical school, including the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Global Health.

Event Sponsors and Lecture Series

UVA Forum on Health Law and Policy

The Forum gives faculty and students from the Schools of Law and Medicine (and elsewhere in the University) the chance to present works in progress.

Sadie Lewis Webb Program in Law and Biomedicine/Health Policy Lecture Series

Established by Earl "Duke" Collier, Law Class of 1973 in 2002 in honor of his grandmother, the Program sponsors the Sadie Lewis Webb Visiting Scholar, faculty workshops, scholarly lunch discussions, informal seminars, medical center hour presentations and symposium on health, human rights and ethics. The inaugural visitor was Dr. Albert Jonsen in October 2002 and Alta Charo in January and March of 2004. More

P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture

The P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture in Law and Psychiatry was established by the University of Virginia School of Law as a tribute to the life and work of P. Browning Hoffman, who held joint appointments as Professor of Law and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and was the founding director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy.

Previous Lecturers

• Jennifer Skeem, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
• Jeffrey Swanson, Ph.D., Duke University
• Alan Stone, M.D., Harvard University
• Seymour Halleck, M.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Norval Morris, L.L.B., L.L.M., Ph.D., University of Chicago
• Loren Roth, M.D., M.P.H., University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
• Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School
• Tom Grisso, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School
• John Gunn, M.D. University of London
• Robert A. Burt, M.A., J.D. Yale University
• Semyon Gluzman, M.D., Ukrainian Psychiatric Association
• Stephen J. Morse of the University of Pennsylvania Law School