GW Law Dean and Harold H. Green Professor of Law Dayna Bowen Matthew was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) on Saturday, October 18.
The National Academy of Medicine’s annual induction of new members is a top honor in the medical field. The event recognizes and celebrates national health experts who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service in the public health field.
With her induction into the academy, Dean Matthew joins a small group of highly accomplished and respected professionals, of which an even smaller group is affiliated with professions related to health and medicine, such as law, engineering, social science, and the humanities.
“I am honored to join a group of medical scientists, social scientists, and health care experts who are dedicated to providing decision makers around the world with the data and information necessary to shape impactful, evidence-based policy that will catalyze better health outcomes for everyone everywhere,” Dean Matthew said. “I became a believer in the collaboration between science, medicine and policy-making early in my career when I began to tackle the ways in which law can be used to address health problems and health disparities. As we address issues such as vaccine policy, long-Covid, climate change, environmental injustice, and gun violence that threaten the health of the American people and America’s democracy, we need the work of the National Academy of Medicine more than ever before.”
The Academy, which was established in 1970 as the National Institute of Medicine, focuses on health, science, medicine, and related policy. In collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, NAM provides independent, objective analysis and advice, conducts activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions, and encourages education and research in STEM.
Dean Matthew is a leader in public health and civil rights law and her research focuses on the social determinants of poor health, disparities in health, health care, and the legal solutions that can improve health for all. She is the author of numerous articles and the books Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care and Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America that have become bestsellers, helping to support physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and other health care professionals who seek to improve public health for all.
Dean Matthew has held multiple roles in the field of public health. In 2013, she co-founded the Colorado Health Equity Project, a medical-legal partnership incubator aimed at removing barriers to good health for low-income clients by providing legal representation, research, and policy advocacy. And in 2015, she served as the Senior Adviser to the Director of the Office of Civil Rights for the US Environmental Protection Agency, where she expedited cases on behalf of historically vulnerable communities besieged by pollution. Dean Matthew also served as a member of the health policy team under Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow. She is a member of the American Law Institute and currently serves on several public health boards including the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ COVID-19 Vaccine Working Group, the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and the Scientific Advisory Council of the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts.
Dean Matthew, enjoys research, writing, and influencing policy, however, she most enjoys teaching students as part of GW Law’s Health Law and Policy program. One of her proudest achievements has been to help support the program’s as well as inter-disciplinary courses such as the new medical-legal partnership in which law students and students from the Milken Institute of Public Health work at Bread for the City to improve patients’ health by solving their legal problems. She hopes that her membership in NAM will afford new opportunities to further integrate law, policy, and medicine in the work of improving health and healthcare for all.