Lawrence Gostin, an internationally acclaimed scholar, is the Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Dean Gostin is also Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Center for Law & the Public’s Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities—A Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dean Gostin is Adjunct Professor of Public Health (Faculty of Medical Sciences) and Research Fellow (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies) at Oxford University.
Dean Gostin has two honorary degrees. In 1994, the Chancellor of the State University of New York conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree. In 2006, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Vice Chancellor awarded Cardiff University’s (Wales) highest honor, an Honorary Fellow.
Dean Gostin is an elected lifetime Member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and has chaired IOM Committees on important public health topics such as genomics and human subject research on prisoners. In 2006, the IOM awarded Dean Gostin the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal for distinguished service to further the IOM mission of science and health. Dean Gostin also chairs a World Health Organization project on the law and ethics of public health strategies for pandemic influenza. Dean Gostin has lead major law reform initiatives in the U.S., including the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) to combat bioterrorism and the “Turning Point” Model State Public Health Act. He is also leading a drafting team on developing a Model Public Health Law for the World Health Organization.
Dean Gostin received the Rosemary Delbridge Memorial Award from the National Consumer Council (U.K.) for the person “who has most influenced Parliament and government to act for the welfare of society.” He also received the Key to Tohoko University (Japan) for distinguished contributions to human rights in mental health. At the CDC Public Health Law Conference in 2006, he received the Public Health Law Association Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award “in recognition of a career devoted to using law to improve the public’s health.”
Dean Gostin’s latest books are: Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press and Milbank Memorial Fund, 2nd ed. Forthcoming 2008); Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2007); The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice, and Unfulfilled Expectations (University of North Carolina Press, 2004); The Human Rights of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities: Different But Equal (Oxford University Press, 2003); Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (University of California Press and Milbank Memorial Fund, 2002).
For a copy of Dean Gostin's inaugural address for the O'Neill Institute, please click here.
To see a video of Dean Gostin's inaugural address, click here.
