From the Office of the Executive Director
Greetings! Thank you for visiting our web site.
Health care and law interact every day. Bioterrorism, cloning, patient safety, child welfare, the uninsured, and pharmaceutical safety and pricing policy are just some of the concerns that have tremendous impact upon our lives and our liberties. Understanding the complex nature of these issues and their interaction requires legal and medical knowledge; specifically, health law and the policies surrounding them.
The study of these issues requires understanding the rules that impact health care and understanding the health care delivery system itself. San Diego provides the interested student and more mature scholar the opportunity to meet both of these requirements. First, the Institute of Health Law Studies has outstanding nationally and internationally recognized researchers, fellows, and scholars in the legal and policy aspects of health care. Their reputations draw local, regional, and national funding and their expertise is highly sought by policymakers at all levels. San Diego is also home to the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, one of the premier medical schools in the world, and its outstanding affiliated institutions and faculty. UCSD School of Medicine has world-class expertise in virtually all facets of medical care, including academic research, bioethics, clinical medicine, health policy, patient safety, and public health. As well, San Diego is home to some of the most cutting edge biotechnology firms in the world. Thus, San Diego is a treasure for those interested in studying health law and policy—and it provides an unparalleled training ground for future health lawyers and policymakers.
We value our interdisciplinary focus and believe this approach is essential to study and address social problems involving health care. Such problems do not provide us the luxury of confining themselves to a single academic discipline, and hence IHLS strives to provide a broad set of skills and experiences to gain an appropriate understanding, and then an effective approach, to addressing community health care needs. We encourage our students to take courses in law at California Western School of Law, other graduate courses such as those in the Department of Political Science and the School of Medicine at UCSD, and public health courses at San Diego State University. Further, it is important to be engaged and have a voice in policy issues and debates associated with health care. Members of the Health Law Society, the student arm and integral part of IHLS, can participate in a variety of writing opportunities, including our exclusive contributions to the Recent Developments section of the Journal of Biolaw and Business, which focuses upon biotechnology issues and is edited by faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health, our regular contributions to Virtual Mentor, the American Medical Association's ethics journal, as well as other independent research and writing opportunities. IHLS and HLS also have the privilege to engage in significant community outreach activities that provide us with opportunities to fulfill our obligations to the underserved.These activities provide our students and members means to excel and have a positive social effect in a wide variety of areas in health care.
Join us in the challenging and exciting endeavor of studying health care law and public policy. We are fortunate that our efforts are rewarded by the significant impact we have on the society around us. We are proud of that legacy and hope you become part of that tradition.
Best wishes,
Bryan A. Liang, MD, PhD, JD
Executive Director, Institute of Health Law Studies