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Student Fellows Program Fall 2020 Research Projects

Below is a list of the proposed 28 research projects for GHI Fall 2020 Student Fellows. Please note that all projects will be conducted remotely unless stated otherwise. Any in-person work is subject to university's operating guidelines. 

More information about the program and how to apply is available on the GHI Student Fellows Program page.

Opportunities for Undergraduate, Graduate Students, Law, and Medical Students

For this section, please take a closer look at who can apply for each project.

Faculty mentor: Anjalee Kohli, Associate Professor, Center for Child and Human Development

Project: We are currently working with partners to support the adaptation of the REAL Fathers project to new communities. REAL Fathers is a fatherhood mentoring project that seeks to prevent violence against children and intimate partners. In the coming year, we will be conducting formative research to inform the adaptation of the project to a new setting (India and possibly Rwanda) and will facilitate an adaptation workshop to share and discuss research, program design and adjust the content for a new population. The student fellow will support this work. This may include documenting learning from implementing formative research, analyzing qualitative data, and writing a brief or manuscript. The student fellow may work with us on the adaptation of the REAL curriculum, including organizing a virtual workshop, developing a workshop agenda, and engaging in and documenting discussions to adjust the content for a new setting. Student fellows interested in violence prevention, program adaptation, research and collaboration may enjoy this project. More information on REAL is here: http://irh.org/projects/real-fathers-initiative/

Who can apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Skills Required: Writing skills. Organized. Qualitative research experience is preferred but not necessary.

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Faculty Mentor: Basit Javaid, Associate Professor, MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute

Project: I study post-transplant outcomes in patients with kidney, pancreas and multi-organ transplantation using center specific and national transplant datasets. Please email the professor if you have any questions at basit.javaid@gunet.georgetown.edu

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate and Medical Students

Skills Required: Basic understanding of Excel and statistics. Ability to write a manuscript under supervision.

Work Environment: Combination of Remote and In Person Work

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Faculty Mentor: Charles Holmes, Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health. Professor of Medicine, Georgetown Medical School.

Project: This position will support the Blantyre Prevention Strategy, an innovative health systems approach to strengthening a locally-led, district-level HIV prevention response. BPS is co-led with the Government of Malawi and implemented by a large consortium of partners. This position will support overall implementation by tracking PEPFAR, Global Fund and national policies and results in Malawi with a focus on the District of Blantyre. This will be critical in enabling BPS to remain aligned with partners and national strategies for stronger coordination of activities at the district-level. While the Blantyre Prevention Strategy is focused initially on HIV prevention, the strategy will benefit many health outcomes, including Universal Health Care and pandemic preparedness agendas.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate Students

Skills required: Literature and policy review. Light data collection and analysis.

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Faculty Mentor: Christopher Loffredo, Professor, Department of Oncology

Project: As a cancer epidemiologist with over two decades of experience in global health, I have been developing a collaboration with colleagues in the U.S. and Thailand to investigate the causes and potential prevention of liver cancer and bile duct cancer. After several years of conducting case-control studies of these two malignancies, it is apparent that most, if not all, of the major causes are amenable to interventions to reduce future risks of cancer. Such factors include hepatitis B and C infections, diabetes, agricultural pesticide exposures, and ingestion of contaminated foods, for which infection control, mitigation of exposures, and promotion of healthy lifestyle could all play a positive role. Continued analysis of previously collected epidemiological data and the incorporation of community-based qualitative data will yield a mixed-methods approach to developing new behavioral intervention studies.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate Students

Skills Required: Basic computer skills. Willing to learn data analysis techniques. Good writing skills.

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Faculty Mentor: Claire Standley, Assistant Research Professor, Center for Global Health Science and Security

Project: The COVID-19 pandemic has upended previous assumptions related to concepts of global health security and epidemic preparedness; in 2019, the US and UK were the top scoring countries for preparedness indicators in the Global Health Security Index, and yet have among the worst case and death rates globally. For the first months of the pandemic, countries in sub-Saharan Africa appeared largely spared; however case counts are now dramatically increasing in some countries, with concerns over underreporting and lack of sufficient testing in others. Entities such as the Africa CDC have received deserved praise over their efforts to coordinate response efforts and strengthen capacities in member states – though the emphasis has largely been on public health response actions (such as surveillance and laboratory testing, and provision of PPE) rather than medical care. Indeed, when the Africa CDC was established in 2017, it was specifically intended to serve as a regional public health agency, and had no specific activities related to health care. COVID-19 has forced the Africa CDC to start to consider clinical care within its mandate; however, is it equipped to do so? And has a legacy of foreign investment focused on public health capacities, in the interest of global health security, rather than healthcare systems, left Africa especially vulnerable to this crisis? This project will use a case study approach to investigate trends in medical versus public health assistance in sub-Saharan Africa.

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required: The GHI fellow must have strong independent work skills, such as prior experience with literature reviews and policy analysis. They should ideally have prior experience with global health programs, preferably in sub-Saharan Africa. Knowledge of French or Portuguese would be an asset but not required.

Other: This project presents an opportunity to join the Center for Global Health Science and Security and undertake research that is directly relevant to the on-going COVID-19 response, as well as to the study of health diplomacy and global health security capacity strengthening more broadly. The GHI fellow would be able to interact with the other faculty and staff at the Center and learn more about other aspects of on-going GHS research. Depending on the outcomes of the project, the GHI fellow might also have the opportunity to refine their findings into a manuscript for peer-reviewed publication.

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Faculty Mentor: Colin Carlson, Assistant Research Professor, Center for Global Health Science and Security

Project: Graduate and advanced undergraduate students sought to work on the ecology and evolution of emerging wildlife and human viruses, using data science and machine learning tools. Specific projects could include: (1) building a database of vector competence experiments, and designing a model of vector-virus interactions; (2) evaluating the evidence base for links between emerging viruses and exposure pathways like the wildlife trade; or (3) any other co-designed work, focusing on machine learning approaches to forecasting emerging viruses. The student will be working as part of the VERENA Consortium (viralemergence.org), an international scientific collaboration based at Georgetown, on a team of cutting-edge virologists, ecologists, and data scientists. While computational experience is preferred (particularly R or Python), students can also learn quickly on-the-job.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate Students

Skills required: R and/or Python skills a plus (R preferred), but not required - just basic familiarity with data and interest in learning new things.

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Faculty Mentor: Emily Mendenhall, Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor, STIA-SFS

Project: This project examines the culture and politics of coronavirus in multiple rural towns -- three in America and one in Kenya -- in order to understand why people outright reject public health recommendations amidst a global pandemic. This project sites involve around 200 in depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations (+/- 50 from each site). We need people interested in qualitative research to help with transcriptions, coding transcripts, and doing other research tasks. Great post for anyone interested in ethnography, qualitative data analysis, and social science. It's a class study of medical anthropology, working with a collaborative team.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate and Medical Students

Skills required: Taken some social theory or social science courses. Interest in qualitative data. Detail oriented and open to learning new methodological techniques for transcription and data analysis.

Other: This project will produce multiple publications in varied forms -- from articles to potentially a book. Lots of great experiences are available.

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Faculty Mentor: Erin Sorrell, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Science & Security, Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Project: Social determinants of health are conditions in the environment where people are born, raised, educated, work and live. They impact a wide range of health and quality-of-life outcomes. Resources provided to communities to improve these conditions and improve quality of life can have a significant impact on health outcomes both in the short and long-term. This project will look at the impact of social determinants of health on infectious diseases in the US, with a particular focus on migrant communities using current observations from the COVID-19 pandemic, and outline recommendations for improving access to care during an infectious disease outbreak as well as improvements towards baseline investments in community health and wellbeing.

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required: Ability to think creatively, analyze data and write concisely and clearly.

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Faculty Mentor: Ibrahim Bola Gobir, Field Resident Director West and Central Africa, Assistant Professor of Medicine, GUMC

Project: Georgetown University through Center for Global Health Practice and Impact is supporting the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) to strengthen its disease surveillance activities. Our activities include Surveillance, Case Management, Technology solutions to strengthen disease surveillance reporting for epidemic prone diseases, continuous quality improvement and utilization of data by decision makers. The proposed project will focus on identification, review, analyze and publishing of reports from collected data which will include but not limited to those on Rapid Morality Surveillance, Event Base Surveillance and ongoing strengthening activities for NCDC Information Technology department. Outputs will range from (1) the identification of key metrics on total, all-cause mortality occurring in surveillance areas, and (2) integrating of the data into the national surveillance systems visualizations of total mortality leveraging technology solutions etc.

Who can apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Skills required: Research, writing, analytic and critical think skills.

Other: Although work can be done remotely, there are unique opportunities to interface with others working in the field directly beyond me in addition to in person work if requested by applicant. Also, the skills listed above are flexible and can also be learnt on the job

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Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Bouey, Associate Professor, International Health

Project: Prepare manuscripts about migrant health and HIV prevention based on data collected from Bangladesh and DC.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate Students

Skills Required: Editing. Literature review. Text analysis. Create bibliography and reference tables.

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Faculty Mentor: Joan Lombardi, Senior Scholar, Center for Child and Human Development

Project: Compiling early childhood development projects across the University, tracking early childhood development initiatives globally particularly focused on young children and families in emergencies and USG global children's issues. Please reach out to the faculty mentor if you have any questions.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate Students

Skills required: Interest and background working on global children's issues, general research skills and strong writing and communication skills.

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Faculty Mentor: Judy Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Oncology and Cancer Prevention and Control Program in the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center

Project: We will conduct an international study funded by the 2020 GHI research seed grant to understand how different diets before and after cancer diagnosis affect the severity of treatment-related symptoms and quality of life among newly diagnosed breast cancer patients in the U.S. and Taiwan. Eligible patients will be diagnosed with stage 0-III breast cancer within six months and participate in two survey interviews via telephone. Study findings will provide suggestions for the role of dietary approaches in risk for developing breast cancer, symptom management during cancer treatment, and cancer rehabilitation after treatment. Students who are interested in this study will be involved in various research tasks including: 1) receiving training for human subjects research, 2) using telephone to enroll eligible female patients from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, 3) developing research materials for patient enrollment and survey data collection, 4) setting up and managing excel and/or statistical database for data entry and analysis, 5) interviewing participants via telephone or online survey forms at two study time points, 6) entering and checking survey and clinical data, 7) mailing gift cards to participants, 8) coordinating with researchers and staff from the National Taiwan University and other research institutes for material production, data collection and transmission, 9) participating in manuscript writing and grant applications if interested, and 10) assisting any research-related logistics such as literature review, IRB applications, and other administrative documents. Note: Patients may prefer to be telephone interviewed in the evenings or on the weekends. A flexible work schedule may be needed.

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate and Medical Students

Skills required: Fluent in speaking and writing English; Skills in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Basic statistical skills in SAS or language skills in traditional Chinese characters is a plus.

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Faculty mentor: Katharine Donato, Professor, Walsh School of Foreign Service

Project: The project will involve analysis of data collected from 4,000 households in Bangladesh. The work will focus on child and adult health outcomes, using measures of reproductive and current health. GHI student fellow would analyze the data under my supervision, and then assist with other tasks that will lead to a publishable manuscript. The work is part of a NSF-funded project on the environmental drivers of migration in Bangladesh.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, and Graduate Students. 

Skills required: Some experience using R, STATA or other stat package. No experience in Bangladesh is needed.

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Faculty Mentor: Katie Gottschalk, Executive Director, O'Neill Institute, Georgetown Law

Project: The Student Fellow will work with the Executive Director of the O’Neill Institute on one of the Institute’s flagship projects: the COVID-19 Law Lab. The COVID-19 Law Lab, launched in collaboration with WHO, UNDP and UNAIDS is a database that compiles country-level laws implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including laws on state of emergency declarations, quarantine measures, and laws relating to disease surveillance, mask-wearing, social distancing, and access to medication and vaccines. The Student Fellow will help review submitted laws for accuracy and relevance, as well as contributing to original analysis and drafting for toolkits and other documents to support the implantation of equitable, evidence-based law and policy. Finally, the Student Fellow will work with the project team on identifying ways to expand the database’s utility and impact to combat the COVID-19 epidemic.

Who can apply: Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required: Basic understanding of health, public health, or law

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Faculty Mentor: Martine Etienne-Mesubi, Clinical Research Assistant Professor, Health Services Outcomes Improvement Lead, Center for Global Health Practice and Impact

Project: Our center is working on several global projects in different countries. I would specifically like to work with students on an HIV care delivery service program we have in Cameroon and/or an HIV loss to follow up outcomes program in Haiti. We have teams in both countries and we also have an HQ level team that supports the in-country teams. These programs will give students an opportunity to get a well rounded view of what true global health program implementation and service delivery look like. We will work on technical and programmatic aspects of global health programming.

Who can apply: Graduate and Medical Students

Skills required: Students should have (but not required) some data analysis skills, research skills, and writing skills . Able to work independently and show initiative.

Work Environment: Combination of Remote and In Person Work

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Faculty Mentor: Neal Horen, Associate Professor, Director of Early Childhood, Center for Child and Human Development

Project: We are developing a Child Protection Specialist Training and Certification for the United Arab Emirates. WE are developing a ten day training with follow up communities of practice that will allow the Abu Dhabi emirate to certify that child protection specialists are qualified. A student fellow could be valuable in helping us research and develop materials. There may be other work in the United Arab Emirates that will come during the coming year that could also be an opportunity

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, and Graduate Students

Skills required: Research skills, formatting of attractive teaching materials. Arabic speaker a huge plus.

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Faculty Mentor: Neeraj Mistry, Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health, NHS

Project: Support with literature review, research, and analysis on Integrated Approaches to Control Neglected Tropical Diseases. This research will contribute to a paper on which the student can be a co-author, and for submission to conferences.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a diverse group of communicable diseases that prevail in tropical and subtropical conditions affecting over 1 billion people, particularly those who live in poverty with poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene, and rural dwellers and subsistence farmers who live close to animals and livestock.

Interventions against NTDs include Mass Drug Administration, Intensified Disease Management, Vector Control, and Environmental measures. Traditionally, each disease was managed individually, but given the same communities are vulnerable and a high prevalence of co-morbidity of various NTDs, integrated programs have become the approach of choice. This research paper will create a framework for documenting and analyzing various integrated NTD control programs to determine efficiency, coverage, and impact.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior, and Graduate Students

Skills required: Good research, analytic and writing skills.

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Faculty Mentor: Paul D Roepe, Professor, Department of Chemistry

Project: We study infectious diseases, primarily parasitic diseases like malaria and toxoplasmosis. I run a vibrant basic and translational science laboratory, but we are interested in pretty much everything related to these diseases from policy to vaccines, and have sponsored students at all levels interested in many different things. Current projects that are the most active include trying to understand the spread and emergence of resistance to the antimalarial drug artemisinin, what this means for public health policy, what new drug combinations can we discover that are active against resistant parasites, and what the molecular mechanism of resistance might be inside the parasite cells.

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required: Depends on the project they are interested in, but some basic biology and/or basic chemistry is needed

Work Environment: Combination of Remote and In Person Work

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Faculty Mentor: Rebecca Katz, Professor and Director, Center for Global Health Science and Security

Project: We have created an online tool available at covid-local.org/amp. has collated a detailed repository of the policies implemented at the international, national, state, and county level to respond to COVID-19, including timelines and the associated legal authorities on which they draw. This dataset is the result of an on-going, large-scale data collection effort designed to capture policies as they are implemented, in recognition that many such policies may be short term or be quickly overturned and lost to the historical record. We are looking for students interested in contributing to updating domestic and global policies, as well as write and publish analyses.

Who can apply: Undergraduate, Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required: Strong attention to detail, writing skills and ability to collaborate.

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Faculty Mentor: Rosemary Sokas, Professor of Human Science, Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies

Project 1: The U.S. H2A visa program allowing employers to legally hire foreign born workers for agricultural work has been modified because of the current pandemic, but those modifications have not addressed worker safety and health. This project will support Farmworker Justice, a non-profit organization working to empower migrant and seasonal farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions, including occupational safety and health. The focus will be on gathering data from federal and other websites to identify the overlap between H2A employment levels and COVID-19 outbreaks, or other projects to support policies to improve worker safety and health.

Who can apply (Project 1): Graduate, Law and Medical Students

Skills required (Project 1): Familiarity with excel spreadsheets and with at least one statistical package. Basic applied statistical skills, library search and writing skills.

Project 2: We have been working with the National Public Health Institute of Liberia to develop training materials for healthcare worker safety and health training. The next phase of this project will be to conduct process and outcome evaluation of the training sessions remotely, although the pandemic has set our timeline back. We will be developing qualitative and quantitative assessments that we hope to use in Liberia, with collaborators from university participants in Monrovia as well as NPHIL colleagues, and will explore alternative locations if necessary.

Who can apply (Project 2): Undergraduate Junior and Senior, Graduate and Medical Students

Skills required (Project 2): Good written and oral communication skills, quantitative statistical skills a plus.

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Faculty Mentor: Shweta Bansal, Associate Professor, Department of Biology

Project: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the socio-economic inequities inherent in public health in the US. One of the key mechanisms by which health disparities are reinforced and amplified is through access to paid leave. We seek to understand how the landscape of paid leave policies around the US can drive disparities in infectious disease burden locally and regionally. This project will integrate policy data with infection burden data, and understand both using tools from infectious disease modeling.

Who can apply: Undergraduate Junior and Senior

Skills required: Data mining, statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, infectious disease epidemiology

Opportunities for only Graduate Students

Faculty Mentor: Gael O'Sullivan, Project Director, Business for Impact, McDonough School of Business

Project: The Business for Impact team at the McDonough School of Business has a project funded by the US Agency for International Development focused on improving respectful maternity care in Liberia and Tanzania. The project is led by Americares, and the other sub-awardee partner is Christian Connections for International Health. Georgetown's role is to provide expertise in behavioral science and social marketing. We will oversee research to understand better what the gaps and challenges are in providing respectful maternity care, and then we will develop strategies to improve health care provider behavior and health-seeking behavior on the part of women and their families.

Who can apply: Graduate Students

Skills required: Research - literature review. Ability to develop questionnaires and focus group discussion guides. Data analysis. Familiarity with global health and maternal/child health.

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Faculty Mentor: Vincent Turbat, Associate Professor, Department of International Health

Project: Financing Health Services for (i) Refugees; and (ii) underserved population. Field of Research: Health Economics & Financing.

Who can apply: Graduate Students

Skills required: Health Information, Data Analysis, and (if possible) Basics in econometrics.

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Faculty Mentor: Wu Zeng, Associate Professor, Department of International Health, School of Nursing & Health Studies

Project:  Cost-effectiveness modelling of Ebola responses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  On August 1 2018, the DRC Ministry of Health declared its 10th Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in the North Kivu Province. Between August 2018 and September 2020, a Strategic Response Plan (SRP) was put into place and it is estimated that all SRP budgets were greater than 1 billion USD. This study aims to examine the cost-effectiveness of the Ebola response in DRC. 

Who can apply: Graduate Students

Skills required: Literature review, costing analysis, programming and statistical skills using R or Stata.

Opportunities for only Medical Students

Faculty Mentor: John Marshall, Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Georgetown Medical Center

Project: To help create a funded education product to close the widening knowledge gap between researchers and practicing physicians, caused by the rapid changes in precision medicine technologies. The course entitled POWER, Precision Oncology Web Education Resource, is a multi-lingual, certificate granting, web based course designed for practicing clinicians.

Who can apply: Medical Students

Skills required: Understanding of web-based products, basic cancer science, financial management.

Opportunities for only Law Students

Faculty Mentor: Alexandra Phelan, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Science & Security

Project: Our work examines the impact of international law on preventing and responding to pandemics and outbreaks. Past outbreaks and Covid19 have highlighted gaps in international infectious disease laws and need for amending existing or creating new treaties, including the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR). Under the supervision of Prof. Phelan, the fellow will work provide research, writing, and other support to a project examining reform of the IHR and other international law, including human rights law, for infectious disease prevention and response. More information about our work in this area can be found here: https://ghss.georgetown.edu/iliaid/

Who can apply: Law Students

Skills Required: Prospective fellows will have an interest, and ideally experience, in international law or global health law.

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Faculty Mentor:  Lawrence Gostin, Professor, Law Center

Project: The fellow would contribute to two projects: 1) Professor Gostin is developing a second edition of Global Health Law, a book first published in 2014 that defined the field of global health law and has served as the leading reference on the subject. The second edition will be a major revision, with numerous new chapters and updates to chapters in the first edition to bring the book up to date. The fellow will provide research support for this second edition and may have an opportunity to directly contribute to drafting material for the book. 2) Professor Gostin has been a leading voice on a law and policy response to COVID-19 that respects human rights and advances public health. With COVID-19 remaining a national and global crisis, the fellow can expect to have the opportunity to provide research and possibly other support to COVID-19 articles and possibly other projects.

Who can apply: Law Students

Skills Required: Strong research and writing skills will be important, along with an interest in global health issues and the potential of law to address them, equity and justice, and COVID-19.