Nia Johnson’s scholarship lies at the intersection of health law, bioethics, and race and the law. Her work studies discrimination in healthcare delivery, public health infrastructure development, and political forces that disrupt public health initiatives. She accomplishes this by analyzing the impact of racial resentment in health policy lawmaking, highlighting law has been a tool for achieving better healthcare allocation and where the law may undermine those goals. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, UC Law Journal, JAMA Health Forum, and the Hastings Center Report. She also received the Wilhelmina M. Reuben-Cooke Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Practices Fellowship from The Duke Endowment and Duke University’s Office of the Provost from 2023 to 2024 and the Duke Initiative for Science and Society Faculty and Staff Leadership Award in 2023.
Nia received her Bachelor of Arts in International Studies at Oakwood University, her Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and her law degree from Boston University School of Law. While attending Boston University School of Law, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Law and Medicine from 2018 to 2019. She then obtained her Ph.D. in Health Policy, with a concentration in Political Analysis, from Harvard University in 2023. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University School of Law from 2022 to 2025. She is currently an incoming Assistant Professor of Law at Wake Forest University School of Law.
Presentation: Private Health Neglect