Global Health Institute

Dean Roberta Waite of Georgetown University’s School of Nursing joined our Conversations in Health: Global to Local class on February 28, 2023, to discuss the presence of structural racism in health care and how we can address these issues and achieve health equity through education. As an expert in psychiatric-mental health nursing, she emphasized the fact that health starts at a very personal level, within one’s home environment. At Georgetown, like many other nursing schools, the acute care setting makes up a majority of the clinical experiences for students in addition to their pharmacology and pathophysiology classes. While these are important foundational areas in which nurses must be knowledgeable, there is still a lot that they must learn in order to truly care for people and get to the root of their health status. Dean Waite explained that by developing relationships with local organizations in the nearby area, nursing programs can eventually expand their clinical experiences to more community-based health clinics or home visits so that students can understand the way patients live outside of the hospital setting.

Before our conversation with Tim Westmoreland, a professor of practice emeritus at Georgetown Law, I was one of many people who did not fully understand the study or practice of health law. Professor Westmoreland received his Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School during a time when health care law was just beginning to emerge as a field. Instead of taking the bar exam, Professor Westmoreland used his knowledge of health care law to shape legislation as counsel to a subcommittee on health and the environment, becoming the lead staffer for health policy in the U.S. House of Representatives for 13 years. He demonstrated to our Conversations in Health: Global to Local class that a law degree can be an extremely powerful tool for influencing health care. This was evident in his numerous successes while working on the Hill, including his work on the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration.