A Multitude of Health Law Courses
The Health Law Program offers more than a dozen courses and prepares students for practice in all aspects of health law and in all types of health care settings. In addition to law school courses, students in the Health Law Certificate may take up to 6 credits in the Graduate School of Public Health, the Center for Bioethics and Health Law, the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University (adjacent to the Pitt campus) and in other graduate and professional programs at Pitt, CMU, and Duquesne universities. For advice about taking courses outside the law school, you may wish to consult the Health Law Certificate Program Director.
All students in the Health Law Certificate Program take a common core of courses: the survey course in Health Law and Policy, and Current Issues in Health Law. In addition, all students must take a skills course and write their upper-level writing requirement paper on a topic in health law.
Students also have the opportunity to keep pace with the hottest topics in health law by attending the Pennsylvania Bar Institute's annual two-day Health Law Institute and to participate in an interschool competition in health care transactional law.
World-Class Health Care Knowledge
Pitt's Health Law Certificate Program has the advantage of being affiliated with the world-class, comprehensive health care facilities available at the University of Pittsburgh. The Law School is only three blocks away from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center System's complex of hospitals and numerous institutes and clinics. Perhaps best known as a world leader in organ transplantation, the medical center is recognized for innovative hospital management and patient-care techniques, and for specialties including cancer research, diagnostic artificial intelligence, reproductive physiology, pain control, cardiovascular research, AIDS, and geriatrics, and many more.
Opportunities to Network
The city of Pittsburgh is host to a large number of law firms and attorneys who specialize in or have departments in health law. Students meet and network with many of these attorneys, as well as health care practitioners, lawmakers, and representatives of consumer groups, through the innovative Current Issues in Health Law course. This course is taught by health-law practitioners and helps integrate the academic and practice aspects of the program, and allows students to examine the larger issues and ramifications of the relationship between health care and law.