2019 Annual Health Reform Update

Sara Wilensky, JD, PhD, is the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and special services faculty for undergraduate education in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC.Dr. Wilensky has taught a health policy analysis course and health systems overview course required of all students in the Master of Public Health–Health Policy degree program, as well as the health policy course required of all undergraduate students majoring in public health. She has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on numerous health policy research projects relating to a variety of topics, such as Medicaid coverage, access and financing, community health centers, childhood obesity, HIV preventive services, financing of public hospitals, and data sharing barriers and opportunities between public health and Medicaid agencies.As the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education, Dr. Wilensky oversees all aspects of GWSPH majors, minors, and dual-degree programs, sets the strategic vision for the undergraduate programs, and works with campus partners and outside stakeholders to improve undergraduate public health education.Dr. Wilensky is involved with several GW service activities: she has taught a service learning in public health course in the undergraduate program; she has been heavily involved in making GW’s Writing in the Disciplines program part of the undergraduate major in public health; and she is the advisor to students receiving a master in public policy or a master in public administration with a focus on health policy from GW’s School of Public Policy and Public Administration.Prior to joining GW, Dr. Wilensky was a law clerk for federal Judge Harvey Bartle III in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and worked as an associate at the law firm of Cutler and Stanfield, LLP, in Denver, Colorado. Joel Teitelbaum, JD, LLM, is professor of public health and law, director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program, and Co-Director of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. For 11 years served as vice-chair for academic affairs for the Department of Health Policy and Management. Professor Teitelbaum has taught law, graduate, or undergraduate courses on healthcare law, healthcare civil rights, public health law, minority health policy, and long-term care law and policy. He was the first member of the School of Public Health faculty to receive the University-wide Bender Teaching Award, he has received the School’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and he is a member of the University’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers and the School’s Academy of Master Teachers. He has authored or co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed articles and reports in addition to many book chapters, policy briefs, and blogs on law and social drivers of health, health equity, civil rights issues in health care, health reform and its implementation, medical–legal partnership, and insurance law and policy, and he has delivered more than 100 invited lectures/presentations at leading universities and national conferences. In addition to Essentials of Health Justice, he is co-author of Essentials of Health Policy and Law (Fifth Edition). In 2000, Professor Teitelbaum was corecipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, which he used to explore the creation of a new framework for applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the modern healthcare system. Among other organizations, Professor Teitelbaum is a member of Delta Omega, the national honor society recognizing excellence in the field of public health, and the ASPH/Pfizer Public Health Academy of Distinguished Teachers. In 2016, during President Obama’s second term, Professor Teitelbaum became the first lawyer named to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives (a.k.a. “Healthy People”), the national agenda aimed at improving the health of all Americans over a 10-year span. He serves as a member of the board of advisors of PREPARE, a national advanced care planning organization, and on multiple committees of the American Bar Association: as a liaison to the Task Force on Eviction, Housing Stability, and Equity, as an advisor to the Coordinating Committee on Veterans Benefits and Services, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Public Health Legal Services Research Project in the Center for Human Rights.