Solomon Center Welcomes New and Returning Staff, Affiliates, and Faculty

The 2017-2018 academic year brings major growth to the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School, welcoming new and returning key staff, affiliates, and faculty.

Eugene Rusyn ’17 has joined the Center as the Solomon Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Law.  Rusyn will be leading research efforts for the Center in palliative care and cancer and co-teaching the Medical-Legal Partnership seminar with the Center’s Executive Director, Katherine Kraschel, and the Center’s Faculty Director, Professor Abbe R. Gluck  ’00. Rusyn’s research interests include health law, environmental law, legal history, and the study of government bureaucracy. His work currently focuses on end-of-life law and the relationship between legal systems and cancer treatment. Rusyn was a 2015 recipient of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He holds a B.A. from New York University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. “Eugene was a super star student at the law school, in every possible subject, including health law," Gluck said. “He is going to be a phenomenal addition to our work.”

Along with Rusyn, Claudia Haupt, who recently completed a fellowship with the Yale Information Society Project, joins the center as a Graduate Research Fellow and Lecturer in Law. Haupt’s research is situated at the intersection of health law, professional responsibility, and the First Amendment. She will play an essential role in co-teaching a new interdisciplinary seminar on the opioid crisis in the fall with Gluck and Professors Kate Stith; Ian Ayres ’86; and Mark Barnes ’84. 

The Center also welcomes its first Program Coordinator, Meredith Berger, who will oversee the Center’s daily operations related to events, programs, communications, finances and budgets. She has been at YLS since 2008 and previously worked as the Coordinator to the Global Health Justice Partnership, Information Society Project, and Supreme Court Clinic. Emily Benfer, founder and director of the Health Justice Project at Loyola University Chicago, a leading expert on medical legal partnerships (MLPs) Legal Partnerships and a founder of the MLP at Saint Raphael’s Hospital (now part of Yale New Haven Hospital), also joins the Center as Distinguished Visiting Scholar to advance the Center’s research on MLPs.

Key staff and scholars are also returning to the Center this year. Dr. Greg Curfman, the Solomon Center Senior Advisor and Physician-Scholar in residence, will continue his work at the Center, building off a tremendously productive 2016-2017 academic year, in which he oversaw a dozen Center publications by students. The Center also continues its successful partnership with the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury (CASBI) at Rockefeller University and the Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Joseph Fins, the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics and Law, returns to lead that partnership along with Research Fellow and Senior Advisor, Megan Wright ’16. The CASBI collaboration has also been a banner success for the Center, resulting in six publications since its inception.

As noted above, the Center also welcomes back Mark Barnes ’84, Visiting Lecturer in Law, who will again teach health law in Spring 2018 and co-teach the Law and the Opioid Crisis seminar and Aaron Kesselheim J.D., M.D., who returns a Distinguished Visitor to teach FDA law in the Fall. Kevin Cremin  ’00 will teach a new course on Disability and Mental Health Law.

“I couldn’t be more excited for my first year at the Solomon Center,” said Solomon Center Executive Director Katherine Kraschel. “The Center has attracted and retained both fantastic rising stars in the field and distinguished experts who cover the broad spectrum of expertise in health policy. I feel fortunate to be part of such an outstanding team doing such important work.”