The University of Utah Division of Public Health received a $10,000 award to support the development and teaching of a first-time course in public health law for the 2025-2026 academic year—and Associate Professor Daniel Aaron will be teaching the course with Jennifer Dailey-Provost, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
“As the state’s flagship academic institution, the University of Utah is well-positioned to support and influence critical dialogues regarding the effects that laws and policies have on the health and well-being of people. We also recognize that across the nation, public health programs have significant unmet needs to better train a workforce that can deftly navigate the complex and rapidly changing policy landscapes,” Dailey-Provost said in a news release about the award. “We see the creation of a course in public health law as essential to developing law and policy that can protect and improve the health of whole populations.”
Aaron, who connected with Dailey-Provost when the School of Medicine began discussing a public health course, is looking forward to the opportunity, which creates a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the College of Law and the Division of Public Health.
“I’m excited to assist Jennifer Dailey-Provost with assembling a public health law course. As U.S. life expectancy falters in comparison with peer nations, we need to examine how the law shapes our health,” he says.
Part of a CDC-funded initiative designed to improve capacity for local health departments and increase knowledge of law among the next cadre of public health graduates, the “Teaching Public Health Law in Accredited Schools and Programs of Public Health” project is led by Columbia Mailman School faculty Magda Schaler-Haynes, JD, MPH, and Heather Krasna, PhD. The project is housed within the Center for Public Health Systems in the Department of Health Policy and Management.
In addition to the funding, awardees—which also include the Morehouse School of Medicine and Kent State University College of Public Health—will receive extensive curriculum support and cohort-based mentorship from seasoned faculty, who are experts in teaching the subject to both public health and law students. This initial cohort of faculty and mentors will establish a public health law teaching community of practice to foster learning and share perspectives across academic institutions while receiving support on the development and implementation of their courses and curricular materials. The project is anticipated to expand over subsequent years.
Learn more about the public health project in this news release.