“Race-Disability Intersectionality as a Health Equity Imperative”

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These groups also share harsh histories of medical experimentation, eugenic sterilizations, and health care discrimination. Increasingly discussions of health equity call for intersectional approaches to understanding and addressing health disparities and other forms of health injustice. The intersection of minoritized racial identity and disability, however, has received little sustained attention in the health justice literature, notwithstanding that intersection’s commonness. This lecture draws on the concept of emergent disability (disability that is the result of unjust social structures) to explore the importance of intersectional perspectives in health justice scholarship and advocacy. Asserting the value of cross-movement collaborations in pursuing reforms to advance health equity for Black and disabled people, the lecture highlights how such reforms offer value for the health of Americans broadly.

Biography

Professor Mary Crossley is a John E. Murray Faculty Scholar and Director of the Health Law Program at Pitt Law.  Widely recognized for her scholarship in disability and health law, Professor Crossley has written broadly on issues of inequality in health care financing and delivery and has published articles in numerous law journals, including Columbia Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, and Michigan Journal of Race and Law. She is also the author of the 2022 book Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health. Crossley’s scholarly interests are reflected in a seminar that she has developed on Health Justice, and she has also taught courses in Health Law and Policy, Bioethics & Law, Health Care Compliance, Family Law, and Torts. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an appointed member of the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also serves as a member of the board for AccessLex Institute and for the American Occupational Therapy Association.

Crossley was appointed Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2005 and served as Dean from 2005-2012, focusing her leadership on initiatives relating to curricular reform, innovation programming, and promoting diversity. In 2013 she was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Public Health Law Scholar in Residence, and in 2014-15 she served as a Faculty Mentor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Public Health Law Education Faculty Fellowship Program.

Immediately prior to coming to Pitt Law in 2005, Crossley was the Florida Bar Health Law Section Professor of Law at Florida State University and before that she was on the faculty at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, including two years of service as Associate Academic Dean. Before beginning to teach, she practiced corporate and health care law in San Francisco and New Haven and clerked for Judge Harry Wellford on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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