April Shaw, Ph.D., J.D., is the Deputy Director in the Network’s Health Equity Team. She has expertise in breaking down the policy impacts of laws and illuminating how theory can inform practice. She also has expertise in racial health equity and is especially interested in thinking through how multiple inequities intersect to create systemic disparities. Some of her areas of focus include mental health, suicide prevention, cultural healing and safety, and climate justice. April has worked as the Research Scholar at the Center for Public Health Law & Policy at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and at the Project on Predatory Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law school, writing white papers to assist with defrauded students’ defense to student loan repayment claims. She has also worked as a senior law clerk at the Arizona Court of Appeals drafting court opinions and memorandum.

April earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in social and political philosophy with a focus on gender and racial justice. She wrote her dissertation on severe global poverty and human rights. April received her J.D. with distinction from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, winning first place in the 2015 Sara Weddington Writing Prize for New Student Scholarship in Reproductive Rights Law, a national writing contest.

Articles & Resources

Systemic Racism and Policing: How Can Public Health Advocates Grapple with the Dual Challenges of Systemic Racism and Discriminatory Policing?

Issue BriefMechanisms for Advancing Public HealthRacism as a Public Health Crisis

July 30, 2020
by April Shaw

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.

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Women’s Health at Risk: How the Title X Final Rule Will Impact Poor and Low-Income Women

Law & Policy InsightsHealth ReformMechanisms for Advancing Health Equity

November 7, 2019
by April Shaw

Title X is the only federally funded program for low-income patients exclusively dedicated to providing family planning and preventative services, including contraception and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer and STDs. Title X serves some four million people a year, most of them women. However, recent rule changes threaten to severely limit women’s access to these essential services.

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