Health Justice Scholars Track

Medical students and Law students pose together in front of the Capitol Building after Capitol Hill Day
Med and Law Students outside Capitol Hill in 2023

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable . . . Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Our Mission

To provide future physicians with key knowledge needed to practice medicine through a health justice and racial equity lens. Taking a distinctly inter-professional approach to the practice of medicine, participants collaborate with legal and policy advocates and learn how to use law and policy as tools to improve individual health and wellbeing, transform the systems used to deliver healthcare, and advance broader population health and equity goals.

Our Vision

Empower the next generation of physicians to be advocates for health justice for their patients, within the healthcare system, and on behalf of their communities.

Our Purpose

To provide future physicians with the knowledge and skills they need to practice holistic, collaborative care aimed at addressing the health justice haps that disproportionately impact intentionally and historically marginalized patients and contribute to health disparities.

Some sobering facts about Washington, DC:

  • More than 1 in 5 children in D.C. live in poverty.
  • When compared with White D.C. residents, the percentage of Black residents living with diabetes is nearly six times higher, and the percentages of those living with high blood pressure and dying from heart disease are more than two time higher.
  • The infant mortality rate in Black infants is nearly 5 times higher than White infants.
  • The incidence and mortality rates for cancer across D.C. are higher than the national average.

Among the main drivers of health and health inequities are poverty, lack of education, unequal distribution of resources, inadequate housing, and other essentials of everyday life that are socioeconomic and political in nature. Addressing these complex issues requires aspiring physicians to have knowledge, skills and empathy beyond what is needed to achieve clinical competency.

The Health Justice Scholar (HJS) Track at the Georgetown University School of Medicine offers a unique longitudinal learning experience for medical students who have a passion for social justice and health advocacy. The HJS Track is grounded in Cura Personalis, Latin for “care for the whole person;” a core Jesuit value that is reflected in Georgetown’s unique medical educational experience. Established in 2008, the HJS Track recognizes that physicians alone cannot guarantee overall health and well-being for patients. Embracing an expansive and multi-disciplinary approach to healthcare, the HJS Track empowers students with the understanding and tools they need to address the social, legal, racial, economic, and other structural barriers to health they will encounter throughout their professional lives. Through theoretical and experiential learning, HJS Track students learn about health justice as an advocacy objective and how to address social drivers of health at the individual, systems, and population levels. The HJS Track is part of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance, a robust academic medical-legal partnership between Georgetown’s Medical and Law Centers and MedStar Health (Georgetown’s academic health system partner). The Health Justice Alliance contributes directly to mentorship, applied advocacy experiences, research, and unique inter-professional experiences for Track students all within a community of like-minded peers intent on advancing health equity.

Medical students encounter many formative experiences throughout their four years of study– ones that will introduce them to new ideas and concepts, deeply challenging and emboldening their values, and further shaping their professional identities. No great practitioner becomes great without continual reflection on how the experiences, knowledge, and people they encounter affect their identity, values, and practice. The goal of the HJS Track is to further this development by creating physicians who are compassionate providers and skilled advocates for health justice. Students who complete all requirements receive special distinction at graduation as Health Justice Scholars. Scholars graduate with the knowledge and skills that empower them to embody the dual roles of clinician and patient advocate in their future careers as physicians.

Enrollment: Up to 12 students per cohort

Our Curriculum Overview

  1. First-Year Foundational Health Justice Seminars
  2. Second-Year Capitol Hill Day Program with Law Students
  3. Annual Participation in Health Justice Week
  4. Fourth-Year Interprofessional Advocacy Elective
  5. Final Health Justice Project/Presentation

Our Objectives

By the completion of this scholarly track, students will be able to:

  • Articulate their own concrete vision of health justice and in the context of their roles as health providers.
  •  Evaluate how laws and policies can create or remove barriers to health and well-being for historically and intentionally marginalized communities. 
  • Explain how “health-harming legal needs” (i.e. unmet civil legal needs like unsafe or unstable housing, employment discrimination, inadequate health insurance, food insecurity, etc.) affect patient health and can be addressed through the medical-legal partnership model.
  • Demonstrate foundational understanding of the mechanics and nuances of effective advocacy and how to engage in direct legislative advocacy.
  • Describe based on experience how sustained advocacy can impact health determinants (political, financial, social, and cultural) and subsequent health.
  • Design and produce or contribute to interdisciplinary health justice research/publications. 
  • Formulate and implement action plans for correcting specific health injustices in current and future clinical practice.
  • Participate in a medical legal partnership (MLP) with an applied understanding of the benefits of inter-professional collaboration.

Participation in this track contributes to some of the core competencies required for graduation from Georgetown University School of Medicine including the ability to:

  • Demonstrate intellectual curiosity and a commitment to learning, critically evaluate new knowledge and determine its relevance to the clinical problems of individual patients.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the psychological, socioeconomic, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of human health and illness.
  • Effectively communicate with patients, their family members and caregivers and encourage them to engage in their own care, with sensitivity to patient diversity, community health influences and values.
  • Demonstrate altruism through a commitment of service to the profession and society and advocate for all, especially the vulnerable and disenfranchised.

Contact Information

Faculty & Staff