Title:Health Justice Alliance

Using medical-legal partnership to train students & support DC residents

• The Health Justice Alliance brings together Georgetown’s Law and Medical Centers and works closely with the university’s clinical partner, MedStar Health.
• Medical-Legal partnerships integrate a legal check-up into routine healthcare and include lawyers to treat housing, employment, education, and other health-harming legal issues. 
• Students learn about structural barriers to health and how to use the law to improve health and well-being, fight health disparities, and advance health equity. 

Approaching its 10-year anniversary, the Health Justice Alliance (HJA) teaches students how to work across disciplines to advance health outcomes and justice for vulnerable populations. Since 2017, HJA has launched three medical-legal partnerships: the HJA Law Clinic serves pediatric patients who receive care on MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s mobile medical van, and two HJA Legal Assistance & Well-being (LAW) programs (Cancer LAW and Perinatal LAW) provide no-cost legal services to patients at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. 

These interprofessional clinical learning environments and other HJA programs expose students across Georgetown to the real-world impact of barriers to health and justice, especially for under-resourced communities. As the HJA helps students learn how they can help overcome those barriers, it also fosters hope and reinforces attitudes about serving the common good that will shape their future careers. 

“Working at the HJA as an undergraduate student deeply shaped my Georgetown experience,” says Fatima Sohani (H’26), who studied Health Care Management and Policy. “My introduction to medical-legal partnership guided me to the intersection of health policy, law, and structural reform, providing me with a clear, impactful career path. Sitting in hearings, working with clients, and watching lawyers and health providers collaborate—moved my undergraduate studies beyond the classroom. I now plan to work for a few years in direct legal services and then attend law school.”

The HJA’s values-driven efforts are only possible with donor support. 

“The HJA relies on current use gifts to support the variety of interprofessional learning environments that bring our undergraduate, nursing, law, and medical students together,” says Vicki Girard (L’87), Health Justice Alliance faculty director and co-founder. “We are grateful to the donors who share our core commitments to academic excellence in education and research, social justice, service to others, and cura personalis.”

Support from community members includes gifts from Wendy Gasch (M’92), as well as gifts over the past decade from longtime alumni supporters Marissa McDonnell (C’89, M’93, R’97) and Michael McDonnell (B’86). 

Learning through action

For Georgetown students interested in law, medicine, nursing, health administration, and other relevant academic areas, the HJA offers unique educational opportunities to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations while engaging in critical work to benefit the community. 

“The HJA’s commitment to providing students with hands-on experiences to pursue health and justice for patients and clients is a key feature in attracting and inspiring students,” says Girard.

The HJA Advocacy Rotation, for example, embeds fourth-year students from the School of Medicine’s Health Justice Scholars Track into Law Center clinics and with Cancer LAW. Students spend 1-2 months on legal teams as they meet with clients, participate in legal trainings, and advise on how medical records and diagnoses can support patients’ legal cases. 

Yasmina Sirgi (G’21, M’25), was drawn to the Health Justice Scholars Track at the School of Medicine and the Cancer LAW rotation because of the intersection of social justice and medicine. The rotation, she says, was one of the most meaningful parts of her medical school experience.

“It gave life to Georgetown’s principle of cura personalis by showing me how legal advocacy and medical care must work hand-in-hand to incorporate the human side of care,” says Sirgi. “It helped me see patients not just through a clinical lens but through the broader context of their lives—where they live, what they fear, and what barriers they face outside the exam room.”

HJA’s medical-legal partnerships value active learning and integrate law, medical, and undergraduate students into their work as externs, interns, research associates, and in other capacities. Students see how different professional tools can help solve complex issues as they practice the collaborative and other skills needed to advance health equity at the patient, systems, and policy levels. For some students, their time with HJA inspires them to pursue medical-legal partnership positions after they graduate. Since 2021, five HJA Law Clinic alumni have become Equal Justice Works Fellows with HJA; two are now permanent members of the HJA’s Cancer LAW and Perinatal LAW teams. 

Medical education outside the exam room

As the medical education cornerstone of the HJA, each year Georgetown School of Medicine’s Health Justice Scholars Track welcomes 12 first-year medical students into its longitudinal curriculum. Over four years, these students learn about medical-legal partnerships as a tool to address gaps in health care and gain unique health justice perspectives and skills. 

In their second year, students participate in Capitol Hill Advocacy Day, which engages them in real-world interprofessional collaboration that allows them to practice their advocacy skills. Under the guidance of HJA lawyers and medical faculty, they work on teams with law students throughout the Fall as they learn about the federal legislative process and how to effectively advocate before Congressional representatives. Teams then schedule, prepare, and attend meetings where they make specific pitches on bills and issues to advance health justice.

Connecting learning and research across students’ educational journeys 

The HJA’s themes of justice, equity, and advocacy are also reiterated to students in classes, research, and experiential learning. In the HJA Law Clinic, students have an intensive experience of supervised law practice as they help families address unmet civil legal needs around housing, education, public benefits, and other critical areas. The addition of medical students adds a unique interprofessional dimension that reinforces how deeply health and justice intersect. 

For Skylar Scott (L’26), her time as a clinic student helped shape her lawyering identity. “Overall, my time with the clinic has made me a more confident, empathetic, creative advocate focused on cultural humility,” says Scott. “HJA has taught me the importance of being a valuable member of my community, and increased my drive to address and dismantle structural challenges and barriers to underserved communities.”

The HJA continues to expand its connections with students earlier in their educational journeys. Integrating undergraduates into HJA’s medical-legal partnerships allows them to cultivate hands-on skills typically reserved for graduate students and to widen their exposure to different health and legal education and career possibilities. Ava President (C’25) focused her senior Population Health Capstone on medical-legal partnerships, and her final paper explored the role of public-private partnerships in sustaining these types of partnerships. She cited in-hospital shadowing of lawyers and participating in a housing inspection as the most formative parts of her Georgetown HJA internship experience. Since graduating, she has been working as an Intake Coordinator and Legal Assistant for both the Perinatal LAW and Cancer LAW projects and intends to apply to medical school. 

When Karan Baddala (H’23, M’27), took an HJA CALL seminar, the experience became a factor in his decision to continue at Georgetown for medical school. He is now a Health Justice Scholar at the School of Medicine and counts it as a highlight of his time so far as a medical student. 

“I saw firsthand that Georgetown wasn’t just talking about cura personalis but was living it,” Baddala says. “Georgetown wasn’t just a place to learn medicine; it was a place where I could grow into a physician who understands and addresses the broader systems impacting patients’ lives.”