Yael Cannon

Biography

Yael Cannon is Co-Director of the new Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance and a Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.  Professor Cannon is on leave from the University of New Mexico School of Law, where she is an Associate Professor and teaches in the Community Lawyering Clinic, one of the nation’s leading academic medical-legal partnerships, in which law students collaborate with medical students and faculty to represent low-income children and families who are patients of the UNM Hospital system in a variety of different poverty law matters. She also teaches doctrinal and experiential courses outside of the clinic, including Children’s Law.   Professor Cannon recently secured a $2.6 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to co-found the UNM Center for Child and Family Justice, a partnership with the UNM School of Medicine, College of Nursing and other health sciences departments to pursue justice, racial equity, health, and well-being for vulnerable children and families.  In New Mexico, she co-chaired the state legislature’s J. Paul Taylor Early Childhood Taskforce aimed at developing a comprehensive screening and behavioral health system of care for young children aimed at reducing childhood maltreatment and improving outcomes.  She previously taught at the American University Washington College of Law in the Disability Rights Law Clinic.   In practice, Professor Cannon worked as a Senior Attorney at the Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., where she provided legal services at a Children’s National Medical Center pediatric clinic in Anacostia.  Cannon graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School and summa cum laude from the University of Maryland with B.A. degrees in History and African American Studies.  Her research focuses on the intersections of health and justice and the ways in which the law can address social determinants of health to ensure better outcomes for children and families living in poverty. 

Research Interest

health sciences