For over 30 years, the ASLME Health Law Professors Conference has honored the memory of Jay Healey, a beloved teacher of health law at University of Connecticut Schools of Law and Medicine. Each spring, ASLME seeks nominations from its members for the Jay Healey Teaching Award.

Members identify individuals that would be appropriate recipients of this prestigious award. Nominees are professors who have devoted a significant portion of their career to health law teaching and whose selection would honor Jay’s legacy through their passion for teaching health law, their mentoring of students and/or other faculty, and by their being an inspiration to colleagues and students.

The list of nominees is given to a special selection committee made up of the award’s past 10 recipients. This selection committee votes by secret ballot to select the winner.


2024 Recipient

Sara Rosenbaum. A woman with white curly hair wearing a blue V neck shirt and a gold necklace smiles at the camera.

Sara Rosenbaum

George Washington University School of Public Health

Sara Rosenbaum is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. She is the Founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. She holds a Professorship by Courtesy in the George Washington Law School and is a member of the faculty of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. A creative and prolific researcher, scholar and educator, Rosenbaum is one of the pioneers of the field of health law.

Tim Jost Tribute to Sara Rosenbaum

We honor today Sara Rosenbaum, an exceptionally worthy recipient of the Jay Healey Award.

Sara is a remarkably creative and prolific researcher and scholar. She has published scores of articles in legal, medical, public health, and public policy journals as well as monographs, commissioned papers, blog posts, and a seminal health law teaching book.

Sara has also been an extraordinary advocate for health justice and underserved populations, beginning with her work with the Children’s Defense Fund and National Health Law Program and continuing through her advocacy with Congress, the White House, and federal agencies. She has also drafted numerous amicus briefs for the appellate courts and Supreme Court, including briefing defending Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and EMTALA. Her advocacy was key in establishing the Vaccines for Children program which covers millions of American low income children and contributed to the creation of the CHIP program and Affordable Care Act.

Sara has been a dedicated public servant. She was a founding commissioner and chair of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission and a member of CDC advisory commissions. She has led or participated in numerous National Academy of Medicine committees.

But above all Sara, like Jay Healey himself, has been an exemplary educator. She has taught classes and seminars at both the George Washington University’s Milken institute and Law School and mentored students in public health and law, as well as young health law faculty. Moreover, Sara has also approached all of her work–with Congress, the courts, federal agencies, public health organizations, and writing—as an educator, informing and challenging her many students.

Finally, Sara, as a grandmother of the health law field, has been a wonderful colleague, friend, and mentor to all of us, the health law educator community. Thank you, Sara.

2023 Recipient

2023 Jay Healey Award Winner Mary Crossley

Mary Crossley

University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Mary Crossley is a Professor of Law, John E. Murray Faculty Scholar, and Director of the Health Law Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of 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. She is the author of Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an appointed member of the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Vice Chair of the board for AccessLex Institute.


Jay Healey: Health Law Teaching Leader

Jay, a 1973 graduate of Boston College Law School, was one of the organizers of the first Health Law Teachers Conference in 1976 and soon became the spiritual leader of the nation’s health law teachers, who honored him with the Health Law Teachers Award in 1990 — the youngest person ever to be given the award.

He was a teacher’s teacher, who cared deeply about his students and whose students were extraordinarily fond of him. It was his idea to inaugurate a series of forums at the annual health law teachers meeting to explore values in health law teaching, and his idea to make teaching itself a recurrent theme in the meetings.

Working primarily as a professor in the humanities department in a School of Medicine, Jay was described by the executive director of the University of Connecticut Health Center as “the soul of the health center…he set the ethical and moral tone for the entire institution.”  His students admired his intellect, but also saw him as a trusted friend in whom they could discuss both professional and deeply personal problems. He was intellectually tough and helped lead the way toward integrating health law with bioethics education in both medical schools and law schools. His writings on patient rights and patient advocacy are classics to this day.

He died of pancreatic cancer in 1993, at the age of 46, just 6 weeks after the disease was diagnosed.  His legacy survives in the many students and fellow teachers he inspired.


Past Recipients

*Institution name listed is the location that the person was at when the award was given

2024: Sara Rosenbaum, George Washington University School of Public Health
2023: Mary A. Crossley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
2022: Dayna Bowen Matthew, George Washington University Law School
2021: Paul Lombardo, Georgia State University College of Law
2019: John Jacobi, Seton Hall Law School
2018: Scott Burris, Temple Law School
2017: Peter Jacobson, University of Michigan School of Public Health
2016: Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law
2015: Judith Daar, Whittier Law School
2014: Diane Hoffmann, University of Maryland School of Law
2013: Kathleen Boozang, Seton Hall University
2012: Sidney Watson, Saint Louis University
2011: John Blum, Loyola University Chicago
2010: Eleanor Kinney, Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis
2009: Mark Hall, Wake Forest University
2008: Wendy Mariner, Boston University
2007: Tim Greaney, Saint Louis University
2006: Charity Scott, Georgia State University
2005: Robert Schwartz, University of New Mexico
2004: Jesse Goldner, Saint Louis University School of Law
2003: Larry Gostin, Georgetown University Law Center
2002: Lori Andrews, Chicago Kent College of Law
2001: Maxwell Mehlman, Case Western Reserve University
2000: Timothy S. Jost, Washington and Lee University
1999: Ellen Clayton, Vanderbilt School of Medicine
1998: Arnold “Skip” Rosoff, University of Pennsylvania
1997: Mark Rothstein, University of Houston
1996: Jay Katz, Yale Law School
1995: Fran Miller, Boston University School of Medicine
1994: Karen Rothenberg, University of Maryland School of Law
1993: Barry Furrow, Widener University School of Law
Other Recipients:
Joel Garcia, University of California at Berkeley
Ken Wing, Seattle University
Sandra Johnson, Saint Louis University
Walter Wadlington, University of Virginia School of Law
William Curran, Harvard School of Public Health
George Annas, Boston University School of Public Health
Jay Healey, University of Connecticut Schools of Law & Medicine

Past Jay Healey Award Winners
Past Jay Healey Winners at the 2022 Health Law Professors Conference: (from Left to Right) Paul Lombardo, John Jacobi, Scott Burris, Peter Jacobson, Judith Daar, Diane Hoffmann, Sidney Watson, Mark Hall, and Max Mehlman with ASLME Executive Director Ted Hutchinson