Dr. April Shaw is a staff attorney at the Network’s Northern Region Office. She is interested in a variety of health equity issues as they relate to economic, gender, and racial disparities. She is particularly interested in thinking through how multiple inequities intersect to create systemic disparities. April was previously a Research Scholar at the Center for Public Health Law & Policy at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. She worked at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and, prior to that, as a senior law clerk at the Arizona Court of Appeals.
April received her J.D. with distinction from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law in 2015, and won the Sarah Weddington Writing Prize for New Student Scholarship in Reproductive Rights Law. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2010. There, she focused on social and political philosophy with an emphasis on gender and critical race theory.
Overview 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. ET | July 29, 2021While the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health policy remains to be seen,…
The following guidance document can help guide stakeholders in developing and implementing declarations as well as thinking through broader issues connected to race and racism.
It’s essential to rethink suicide prevention that involves the use of police, and to forge a new path forward that does not result in additional trauma or even death of the very persons whose life—and quality of life—suicide prevention advocates are seeking to protect.
Several universities across the U.S. have announced plans to require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccination before heading back to campus for the fall semester. Brown, Cornell, Duke, Northeastern, and Rutgers are among them. Some institutions of higher learning, like Virginia Tech, have determined that they cannot require vaccinations because of the vaccine’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) status, but this stance rests on shaky legal grounds.
Overview Death by suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people ages 10-24. Certain youth populations, children and young people, are particularly…
In honor of Women's History Month, women in the Network’s Health Equity Working Group have highlighted legal or policy issues affecting women’s health that they see as critically important. The topics addressed cover: economic stability and well-being, pregnancy discrimination, period poverty, and maternal depression. The law and policy solutions discussed here have the potential to improve life for women and girls for generations to come.
In September, President Trump issued an Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping (the “Order”), with stated goals to promote unity and to “combat offensive and Anti-American race and sex stereotyping” within the federal workforce. The intent of the Order is to restrict trainings on gender and race discrimination that have “divisive concepts.” This assessment uses a public health lens to highlight four fundamental shortcomings of the Order.
With growing interest in tackling structural and other forms of racism, this is a good time to consider how theory is fundamental to bringing about meaningful, practical change. The theories that guide us may be consciously thought out or unreflectively adopted. Therefore, it is necessary to intentionally unpack and understand the norms and assumptions that are built into our day-to-day practices and long-term strategies to bring about reforms.
This fact sheet addresses 988’s key features, including why it was adopted, current suicide trends and risks, covered provider obligations and timing, and some key features of recent supportive legislation.
Although there has been some attention to the mental health impacts of student loan debt, little attention has been directed towards the harm experienced by those with student loan debt who have been defrauded by for-profit colleges. These individuals have massive debt after pursuing an education that does not afford any of the opportunities typically associated with higher education. The harm they experience is not merely economic—it’s a social harm with deeply damaging impacts on mental health.
This webinar introduced participants to key principles in Indian law and Tribal public health law, discussed the impact of COVID-19 in Indian Country, and identified response strategies based upon practical experience.
Following the killing of George Floyd, localities have increasingly declared racism to be a public health emergency or crisis. Despite growing recognition of the fact that racism is a key contributor to poor health in communities of color, there is still insufficient attention to the role of policing and systemic racism as institutions that have powerful impacts on the health and well-being of people of color. This issue brief provides an assessment of how structural racism and policing function as critical social determinants of health for Black people and people of color generally.
