First Health Law Fellows Receive Tenure-Track Academic Appointments

Kristen Underhill ’11 and Michael Ulrich, fellows working on health law in association with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, have received academic appointments. Ulrich, who has been the Senior Fellow at the Solomon Center since 2014, will be an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. Underhill, Associate Research Scholar and Fellow in Law and Health, will be an Associate Professor at Columbia Law School.

“One major goal of the Solomon Center is to grow a generation of incredible health law academics,” says Abbe Gluck, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Solomon Center. “We could not be prouder of Michael and Kristen—they have done phenomenal work at YLS. I am certain we will see great things from both of them.”

Kristen Underhill, Associate Research Scholar and Fellow in Law and Health, will begin at Columbia in July and will teach health law and torts. Her research focuses on law and health and her current projects use empirical methods to understand how the law shapes individual decisions about health and risk. During her time as a fellow, she was also a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS and principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health grant examining access to HIV prevention technologies.

Michael Ulrich’s appointment at Boston University starts in September and is in the Department of Health Law, Policy, and Management, working in the Center for Health Law, Ethics, and Human Rights. He has been a Research Scholar, Senior Fellow in Health Law, and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School since August 2014.  He has published articles on the right to water (GW International Law Review), disability rights (Yale Journal of Health Law and Policy), and public health law and infectious disease control (American Journal of Law and Medicine), while leading a group of students and visiting professor Joseph Fins on research for individuals with severe brain injuries, which has resulted in articles on guardianship laws and clinical research (Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal) and Medicare reimbursement for patients with severe brain injury (Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics).