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<p>Students in the new IU Health Law Scholars program will earn a joint graduate degree in law and public health.</p>

McKinney School of Law announces first class of IU Health Law Scholars

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law is pleased to announce the inaugural class of IU Health Law Scholars, a new program made possible by a gift from IU Health.

The IU Health Law Scholars Program recognizes the academic achievement of highly qualified students who are pursuing health-related joint degrees. It is designed to make Juris Doctor/Master of Public Health and Juris Doctor/Master of Health Administration degrees more immersive and more affordable. The degrees are offered jointly though the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law and the IU Fairbanks School of Public Health.

Dan Evans, chief executive officer of IU Health, said that this forward-looking program is intended to “create a student-centric collaboration with the McKinney School of Law that will help IU Health create, attract and retain the best and the brightest.”

Professor Nicolas Terry, executive director of the Hall Center for Law and Health, part of the McKinney School, welcomed the inaugural class of “exceptional students” and noted the “great professional value that these joint degrees provide for IU McKinney’s health-law students.” IU McKinney dean Andrew Klein added, “We are very grateful to IU Health and Dan Evans for their generous support of this far-sighted program.”

During the course of their degree program, IU Health Law Scholars will receive scholarship support, experiential learning opportunities and co-curricular developmental opportunities. These program enhancements are designed to allow the the students to deepen their understanding of the complex interaction between health law, health administration and public health while also providing them essential opportunities to apply their knowledge in experiential learning settings.

For example, IU Health Law Scholars will be assigned practice mentors specific to their chosen fields, and they will be involved in co-curricular academic activities sponsored by the nationally recognized Hall Center as well as programming through the School of Public Health.

Paul Halverson, dean of the School of Public Health, sees the IU Health Law Scholars program as an important advancement in professional training. “Employers often tell us they need new graduates to be ‘job ready,'” he said. “Thanks to the very generous support of Dan Evans and IU Health, we can ensure that students get the clinical experience needed to hit the ground running after graduation. Today’s health-law challenges are complex and can’t be solved by one discipline alone. The IU Health Law Scholars program gives students the ability to view a problem through multiple lenses, and that provides important advantages.”

In its inaugural year, the program has already started educating and training the next generation of health-law leaders for Indiana. The first class of IU Health Law Scholars is composed of students from a wide variety of backgrounds who all have high ambitions for their careers after obtaining their joint degrees.

The five students selected for the inaugural class are Kreigh Howard Cook, Kristen Koewler, Alessa Beatriz Quinones-Ortiz, Emily Sargent and Alyssa Servies.

More information on the program and the inaugural class is available online.

About IU McKinney: Located in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, the IU McKinney School of Law has enjoyed great success in preparing students for legal careers for more than 100 years, as evidenced by the presence of alumni in the judiciary and other branches of government, business, civic leadership and law practice. The school’s 11,000 graduates are located in every state in the nation and several foreign countries.