All posts tagged: Legal Education

Our Dreams Are Valid: Turning Aspiration into Achievement at Temple Law

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For a young man who grew up in a part of the world where daily struggles were considered normal, I realized very early in life that I had more dreams than my environment seemed willing to permit. Walking through the corridors of public schools in Abuakwa, a suburb of Kumasi in Ghana’s Ashanti Region, I dreamed of becoming a businessman, a leader in public service, and a lawyer. Even before I turned twelve, I knew I wanted more. But in an environment where people constantly reminded you of the reasons why you could not succeed, I learned to be careful about how loudly I spoke about my dreams. Before finishing high school, I understood the sacrifices my parents had already made on their modest salaries as teachers. Pursuing law in Ghana was a long and expensive journey, and I convinced myself that it would be wiser to pursue a path that could provide immediate financial stability while postponing my legal ambitions. Still, I never abandoned the belief that I was meant for more. I entered …

Graphic of a globe with interconnected bubbles with cartoons of various people and practitioners to exemplify World Health Day

A Decade of Public Health Legal Education

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Law is the primary social tool used to influence behaviors and environments — for “generalizing or scaling up practices judged collectively beneficial, forestalling negative behavior, and setting powers, duties, and limitations on public and private entities.” As researchers, policymakers, advocates and others seek to better understand how and why legal interventions make a difference to the public’s health, public health legal education stands as a crucial component in the capacity building necessary for rigorous and rapid evaluation of these legal interventions that “treat” millions of people. That evaluation — called public health law research, or legal epidemiology research — supports evidence-based policy- and decision-making that can advance health, improve well-being, and increase equity not only in the United States, but around the world. For nearly 12 years, the Center for Public Health Law Research at the Beasley School of Law has been dedicated to that capacity building through our work developing research methods for legal epidemiology, like policy surveillance (which is the systematic, scientific tracking of laws of public health significance); funding research projects with …