Opportunities

The Yale Clinical Fellowship in Health Justice is a one-year (renewable) position designed for law and/or public health graduates as well as other professionals with experience in domestic and/or international health, including advocacy, programming, research, organizing and policy. 

The GHJP Clinical Fellowship is a unique opportunity for individuals interested in preparing for a career in health justice policy or interdisciplinary clinical teaching. Through close collaboration with GHJP faculty, students, and partners, the Clinical Fellow gains hands-on experience with clinical teaching, interdisciplinary exchange, building advocacy practices utilizing academic and community engagement, and scholarly research and writing.

About GHJP:

The Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP), an initiative of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health, was established in 2012 to promote interdisciplinary, innovative, and effective responses to key problems in health with a justice lens.  Our goals include a transformative collaboration integrating different fields in order to make critical policy and community support interventions, develop new kinds of cross-cutting research and provide educational opportunities straddling a variety of academic disciplines. Leveraging Yale's institutional resources, the GHJP trains students to undertake collaborative, real-world research and advocacy to promote health justice in the U.S. and globally. It also organizes conferences and events, builds partnerships with local NGOs and social movements in New Haven, the U.S. and around the world to move research and critical analyses into action; seeking to nurture a truly interdisciplinary brain trust dedicated to effecting social change.

• Over the years, GHJP has moved toward increased engagement in the U.S. and locally as part of our commitment to playing a role in a shift of access to knowledge and power to community organizations working for health justice. Our work shifted to respond to need  during the COVID-19 pandemic, as local and national exigencies around policing marginalized communities and state failures to enact socio-economic supports for appropriate public health interventions has exacerbated long-standing injustices in the U.S.
• In the era of neo-COVID, we work to integrate the lessons from COVID responses as we engage with partners, be they focused on harm reduction in New Haven, housing-first policies for LGBTQ+ young people in CT,  police accountability for sexual violence against sex workers, or UN experts in the fields of gender and sexuality. 

The GHJP offers a student-centered “Practicum,” a graduate-level course that combines classroom discussions on the theory and practice of health justice with hands-on experience in interdisciplinary research and advocacy. As part of the practicum, teams of law, public health and other graduate and professional school students work in partnership with scholars, activists, lawyers, and health justice practitioners to carry out policy, research and advocacy projects on cutting-edge issues in the US and internationally. We offer a Practicum with seminar and experiential components every other spring, and an Advanced Practicum each fall that primarily focuses on experiential project work.

GHJP practicum students, fellows and faculty have worked together on a variety of projects  and publications that span several substantive areas, including pharma justice; gender, sexuality and rights; infectious diseases and justice; local (New Haven/CT) health justice; and data for health justice. Below is a sample of past and present projects, including:

• Co-authoring a path-breaking report on the U.N.’s role in causing the cholera epidemic in Haiti and the U.N.’s responsibilities to provide legal remedies to victims of the epidemic;
• Collaborating with Yale’s Workers and Immigrants’ Rights Clinic to file a civil lawsuit on behalf of several public health students, a family of Liberian immigrants, and community organizations and healthcare workers, to challenge Connecticut’s quarantine policies and practices as documented in our 2014 report with the ACLU on the unjustified quarantine practices  of travelers from Ebola affected countries;
• Supporting access to medicines in the US and abroad, including by collaborations to develop strategies and campaigns to lower drug prices in the US with US groups such as Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines project and the Prep4All Campaign), and projects to develop interventions in the UN and international IP systems, in collaboration with groups like the Treatment Action Campaign and HealthGAP; 
• Coordinating with Black Mamas Matter Alliance and the CRR to synthesize research on the causes of maternal mortality with state-level policy choices by the state of Georgia  n a report on racial disparity in maternal health outcomes in Georgia;
• Building an on-going advocacy and documentation in partnership with New Haven-based direct service and harm reduction groups (such as SWAN) focusing on such concerns as meaningful access to services and resources in New Haven for people in sex work and other street economies; abuses associated with policing and potentials for state level law reform; and
• Research and analytic support for UN experts in regard to SOGI, and the barriers and limits to fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and in 2004, a year seeing unprecedented numbers of elections globally, focusing on both the repressive rhetoric around gender and sexuality and the concrete barriers to participation in elections for sexual and gender minorities.

Job Description:

The Clinical Fellow is an integral part of GHJP, supporting all aspects of the GHJP’s work including the Practicum and on-going project work. Under the supervision of the GHJP Faculty Directors, the Fellow will: 

•  Play a key role in planning and conducting the Practicum (fall 2024 and spring 2025), including the development of the curriculum and course materials for the didactic component as well as the selection and supervision of projects for the practical component;
• Support new and continuing GHJP community partnerships, particularly working with local allies in New Haven and nationally;
• Support the development and progression of new and ongoing GHJP projects and initiatives,  which include:
  • GHJP’s links to the work of the Law and Political Economy Project with its focus on the roles of law in structuring markets, inclusion and the distribution of resources, including resources need for individual and population level health; 
  • Work with the Youth Equity Science project, focused on supporting the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth; and 
  • On-going work with advocates and scholars globally working in coalitions to address the ‘gender ideology playbook’ attacks and the fault lines within and across feminisms and queer rights claiming, and the place of sport as a key site of repressive gender regulation and abuse. 
• Provide general programmatic support for GHJP, including coordinating external-facing communications (website, social media, newsletter, etc.), helping to plan and organize lectures and workshops, and supporting institutional relationships with other clinical programs, centers and allied research groups.

The Fellowship is supported through the Gruber Project for Global Justice and Women’s Rights and a grant from the Open Society Foundation. 

Qualifications:

The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications:

• A J.D. degree from a U.S. law school (or the equivalent) and an outstanding law school record and/or an MPH or Ph.D. from a U.S. school of public health, public policy or other related discipline, or an MD from a U.S. school of medicine;
• At least four years of prior experience in health, human rights, or related advocacy (policy work at any level: for example, community organizing);
• Strong written and oral communication skills (additional fluency in a language other than English is highly desirable);
• Prior teaching experience and an enthusiastic commitment to working closely with students;
• An interest and proven capacity in legal and/or public health scholarship;
• A commitment to developing relationships with community partners, with particular attention to the power issues arising from university-based advocacy;
• An ability to work independently and as part of a team, including management skills. 

The position is for a one-year term (with the possibility of renewal) with a salary of $75,000 plus health benefits and access to university facilities.

Application Instructions:

Applications for the 2024-2025 Yale Clinical Fellowship in Global Health Justice will be accepted on a rolling basis starting immediately. We encourage interested applicants to submit the required materials by July 19th as the initial and second round of interviews will be conducted virtually in July/early August, in order to begin the Fellowship in time for the Fall 2024 semester. 

Applicants should send a resume, a letter making the case for their candidacy, contact information for three references, and a writing sample by email to health.justice@yale.edu. 

Yale University considers applicants for employment without regard to, and does not discriminate on the basis of, an individual's sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.