Professor Valarie Blake is a scholar and teacher specializing in health law, spanning topics in disability, civil rights, health justice, health disparities, health care finance, poverty, reproductive care, bioethics, health care regulation, and health reform. Blake joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee Winston College of Law in 2024, after teaching for nine years at the West Virginia University College of Law. At WVU, Blake served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development from July 2022-May 2024. At Winston, Blake teaches a Health Care Civil Rights seminar, Administrative Law, and courses in health law. Blake has published over twenty law review articles and book chapters, and over ten peer-reviewed publications. Her work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, Utah Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Cardozo Law Review, Harvard Law & Policy Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy Law & Ethics, and Health Affairs, among other journals. Blake is the author of Lexis Civil Rights & Strategy Series: Federal Health Care Law, a practitioner’s guide on federal health care civil rights remedies. She is the co-author of a modern health care law casebook, published with West Academic, alongside Professors Zack Buck and Jill Wieber Lens. Blake was a visiting professor at Duquesne University’s School of Law from 2013-2015. Blake also served as the Senior Research Associate at the American Medical Association in the Ethics Division, contributing to the AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics. She previously trained as a Fellow in the Cleveland Fellowship in Advanced Bioethics, conducting bioethics consultation and research at the Cleveland Clinic. These experiences — first at patient bedsides, later in national policy — greatly inform her work today.
