About the O’Neill Institute
The O’Neill Institute
for National and Global Health LawThe O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University was established in 2007 through a generous gift by Linda and Timothy O’Neill to respond to the need for innovative solutions to the most pressing health concerns facing the nation and the world. The Institute is a reflection of the importance of public and private law in health policy analysis. The O’Neill Institute is a joint project of the Law Center and School of Nursing and Health Studies and also draws upon the University’s other intellectual resources, including the School of Medicine, the Public Policy Institute, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.
The essential vision for the O’Neill Institute rests upon the proposition that the law has been, and will remain, a fundamental tool for solving critical health problems in our global, national, and local communities. By contributing to a more powerful and deeper understanding of the multiple ways in which law can be used to improve health, the Institute hopes to advance scholarship, research, and teaching that will encourage key decision-makers in the public, private, and civil society sectors to employ the law as a positive tool for enabling more people in the United States and throughout the world to lead healthier lives.
The O’Neill Institute supports world-class research and scholarship that is applied to urgent health problems, using a complex, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and transnational approach to extend beyond a narrow vision of health law that focuses solely on health care as an industry or as a scientific endeavor. The Institute’s projects are organized around three core programs:
- Global Health Law
- National Health Law
- Disease Prevention and Outcomes
Each of these programs combines elements of reflective problem-solving, scholarship, and teaching in ways that draw upon the intellectual strengths within the Institute.
- Reflective Problem-Solving. For select high-priority issues, the O’Neill Institute organizes reflective problem-solving initiatives by which the Institute seeks to bridge the gap between key policymakers in the public, private, and civil society sectors and the intellectual talent and knowledge that resides in the academy.
- Scholarship. The O’Neill Institute supports world-class research and scholarship that is applied to urgent health problems, using a complex, comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and transnational approach to go beyond a narrow vision of health law that focuses solely on health care as an industry or as a scientific endeavor.
- Teaching. The O’Neill Institute responds to pressing health concerns by educating future researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars. We teach our students to rigorously analyze the theoretical, philosophical, political, cultural, economic, scientific, and ethical bases for understanding and responding to health problems. The Institute helps to prepare our graduates to engage in multidisciplinary conversations about national and global health care law and policy with innovative multi-disciplinary courses and degree programs.
