Laura S. Richman

Laura Richman is a health psychologist and health policy scholar who investigates the social and environmental factors that contribute to health disparities. Relying primarily on legal epidemiology and social science methods, Dr. Richman examines the influence of social status, gentrification, and social network characteristics on health behaviors and health outcomes. Dr. Richman's research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and her work has been supported by National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and numerous private foundations. She is most recently the author of Relational Health: How Social Connection Impacts Our Physical and Mental Well-Being (Cambridge Univ. Press 2023).

Dr. Richman also serves as a liaison to the collaborative Program in Law and Health between GW Law and other GW schools, including the Milken School of Public Health and the GW School of Medicine. She will help lead GW’s efforts to improve population and community health through cross-departmental and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Dr. Richman teaches interdisciplinary courses and seminars such as Science, Law and Policy, Legal Epidemiology, and Public Health Law, Ethics, and Policy. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia. Before coming to GW, she was a Professor of Psychology at Duke University, a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke’s Medical School, and a core member of both the Duke-Margolis Center on Health Policy and the Duke Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research.