About the O’Neill Institute

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University was established in 2007 through the generous philanthropy of Linda and Timothy O’Neill to respond to the need for innovative solutions to the most pressing national and international health concerns. Housed at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C., the O’Neill Institute reflects the importance of public and private law in health policy analysis. The O’Neill Institute draws upon the University’s considerable intellectual resources, including the School of Nursing & Health Studies, School of Medicine, the Public Policy Institute, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.

 

The Role of Law

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 local, national, and global communities. By contributing to a more powerful and deeper understanding of the multiple ways in which law can be used to improve health, the O’Neill Institute hopes to encourage key decision-makers in the public, private, and civil society sectors to employ the law as a positive tool to enable individuals and populations in the United States and throughout the world to lead healthier lives.

 

Research Programs

The O’Neill Institute’s research program is organized around Global Health Law and National Health Law. Each area combines elements of reflective problem-solving, scholarship, and teaching to draw on the O’Neill Institute’s intellectual strengths.

• Reflective Problem-Solving. For select issues, the O’Neill Institute undertakes reflective problem-solving initiatives to bridge the gap between the public, private, and civil society sectors and the talent and knowledge that resides in academia.
• Scholarship. The O’Neill Institute supports world-class scholarship that is applied to urgent health problems, using a 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 helps educate future researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars through innovative multidisciplinary courses and degree programs. The Institute teaches its students to rigorously analyze the theoretical, philosophical, political, cultural, economic, scientific, and ethical bases for understanding and responding to health problems.