Global Health and Human Rights

The Health Law Certificate Program is intended to give students interested in health law a basic grounding in the field, complemented by clinical experience and more in-depth study of advanced topics and closely related areas of law. Students are expected and encouraged to obtain the same broad background in law expected of all graduates for the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Students must elect to enter the Program by the beginning of their second year of law school. Only in rare situations (such as when a student is in the Flex Program or a joint degree program) will exceptions be made.

This Global Health and Human Rights Track (GHHRT) aims to provide law students with the theoretical background and research skills necessary to conduct research, collaborate with medical and public health workers, and participate in legal advocacy in the field of health and human rights. Students will explore interactions between health and human rights in three principal domains: (1) the impact of human rights abuses on health, (2) the right to health in international human rights law, and (3) the interaction between legal advocacy and other forms of social empowerment for people adversely affected by health-related human rights violations.

A special feature of the GHHRT is its incorporation of the Interdisciplinary Curriculum in Global Health Training (INCIGHT), a set of four courses in Global Health developed through a collaboration of the School of Law with the Graduate School of Public Health, the School of Medicine, and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. INCIGHT is a response to the fact that the most significant problems in Global Health require multidisciplinary approaches drawing on the expertise of researchers and practitioners in Medicine, Public Health, Policy, and Law. The four INCIGHT courses have been developed to provide students from all four participating schools with a common foundation of current knowledge, concepts, and methods to support multidisciplinary collaboration in Global Health.

Beginning with the Law School Class of 2012, students who select this track will be required to take three of the four INCIGHT courses in addition to the required Core Courses in the Law School, as indicated in the table below. Students with questions about the INCIGHT curriculum, or about this track, should contact the Track Director, Professor David Barnard, at 412-647-5701.

Core Courses (required)

Required INCIGHT Courses 

3 courses are required. Students MUST register for “Concepts and Methods in Global Health” and “Transforming Global Health Education into Action.” For the third course students may register either for “Global Health Policy and Development” or “Micropolitics: NGOs, Development, and Civil Society.”

Clinical Experience (required)

Electives

(Although no electives are required for the GHHRT, the following courses would probably be very useful depending on a student’s particular interests.)

¹This is an Arts and Sciences course, offered by the Center for Bioethics and Health Law. Please register through the Law School’s Registrar Office. The course number is 2664. This course meets on Thursdays from 6:00 – 8:30 p.m. in the Medical Arts Building, Suite 300, 3708 Fifth Avenue. Permission of the instructor is required. You need to get a permission number for this course. Contact Janet Malis at 412-647-5785 or jem11@pitt.edu for permission to enroll.

Writing Requirement

Recordkeeping

The HLC Program Office keeps track of your fulfillment of requirements and periodically notifies you of your status. However, you are ultimately responsible for knowing whether or not you have met all the program requirements in a timely fashion.

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