WSU Applebaum hosts GWU Law Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew for health equity lecture April 7
On Wednesday, April 7, the Wayne State University Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences will host Dr. Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of the George Washington University Law School, as she delivers a presentation titled “A Lawyer’s Prescription for Achieving Health Equity.” The event, which includes both a lecture and a Q&A session, will take place at wayne.edu/live from 4:30 to 6 p.m.
This event marks a revival of the college’s annual Martin Barr–Stephen Wilson Lecture Series, which was created in honor of two former WSU Applebaum deans to highlight the development of health care policy, laws and ethics.
“Dr. Matthew is an expert in health equity and public health policy with a passion for public service,” said Associate Dean for Pharmacy Richard Lucarotti. “Her depth of experience at the intersection of health policy and health care will be of great interest to our college and university community, which puts high value on addressing health disparities.”
A nationally recognized leader in public health and civil rights law who focuses on racial disparities in health care, Matthew is the first woman to lead GW Law. She is the author of the book Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care.
She previously served as the University of Virginia Law School’s William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and the F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights. She was also a professor of public health sciences at the UVA School of Medicine and served as co-founder and inaugural director of the Equity Center, which works to build relationships between the university and the surrounding Charlottesville community to address racial and socioeconomic inequality.
Matthew also has taken on many public policy roles. In 2013, she co-founded the Colorado Health Equity Project, a medical-legal partnership incubator aimed at removing barriers to good health for low-income clients by providing legal representation, research, and policy advocacy. She served as the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow for U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow and as senior advisor in the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She also is a non-resident fellow in the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.
She earned a BA in economics from Harvard-Radcliffe College, a JD from the UVA School of Law, and a PhD in health and behavioral sciences from the University of Colorado Denver.
The Martin Barr–Stephen Wilson Lecture Series is supported by an endowment that was established to reflect the dedication and commitment to educational excellence of former WSU Applebaum deans Martin Barr and Stephen Wilson.
"The lecture series has a long and rich history in our college dating back to its inception in 1954, over the decades attaining national prominence," said Professor Emeritus of Pharmaceutical Sciences Hanley Abramson. "Its objective is to make health care professionals – and indeed the wider general public – aware of emerging health care issues that portend the future direction of public policy in this vital arena that accounts for nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy."
Wilson was the college’s second dean, serving from 1953 until his death in 1963, when Barr, then professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, stepped up. Barr was a dynamic force in the community and the pharmacy profession; the PharmD program is the direct result of his vision and leadership, and he shaped the undergraduate curriculum in pharmacy as well as the college's strong research programs.
“Deans Wilson and Barr would be proud that Dr. Matthew is delivering such an urgent and important message as part of their legacy,” Lucarotti said. “My hope is that this event inspires members of our community to consider, understand and dismantle social and racial disparities in health care throughout their careers.”
