Wendy K. Mariner

Biography

Professor Wendy Mariner’s research focuses on laws governing health risks, including social and personal responsibility for risk creation in conceptions of insurance, as well as national health systems, including the Affordable Care Act and ERISA, health information privacy, and population health policy.

She has published more than 100 articles in the legal, medical and health policy literature on patients and consumers’ rights, health care reform, insurance benefits, insurance regulation, public health, AIDS policy, research with human beings, and reproductive rights, and co-authored the law school textbook, Public Health Law (with Ken Wing, George Annas, and Dan Strouse). She also serves as a Program Chair of the Program in Health Law & Human Rights, a joint project with the Public Health Regulations Analysis Center of the National School of Public Health of the New University of Lisbon. Currently, she serves on the Health Information Exchange-Health Information Technology Council Advisory Committee for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and chairs its Legal and Policy Workgroup. She is also a member of the Council of the American Bar Association’s Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section.

Professor Mariner has served on state, national, and international boards and commissions, including the Massachusetts Health Facilities Appeals Board, the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council Advisory Committee, the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS Policy Advisory Committee, Institute of Medicine Study Committees, the CIOMS/WHO Steering Committee for the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, and the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association. Her university activities have included serving as Chair of the Boston University Faculty Council, Co-Director of Regulatory Knowledge and Research Ethics of Boston University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and legal director for the Boston University School of Public Health project providing technical assistance to the Russian Federation in developing health reform legislation.

She has served as contributing editor for health law and ethics for the American Journal of Public Health and currently sits on the editorial boards of Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law, the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and Human Rights and the Global Economy. She and Professors Annas and Glantz have submitted amicus curiae briefs to the United States Supreme Court in cases involving health law issues, including the Affordable Care Act.