Faculty and Administration Profiles
Kate Mitchell
Title/s: Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Health Justice Project; Director, Curt and Linda Rodin Center for Social Justice
Clinical Professor of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine, Loyola Stritch School of Medicine
Office #: Corboy 715B
Phone: 312.915.7872
Email: kmitchell9@luc.edu
CV Link: Mitchell CV
About
Professor Mitchell joined the Health Justice Project in 2017 after more than 16 years practicing and teaching in the areas of poverty law, juvenile justice, and health law and medical-legal partnerships. Professor Mitchell’s practice experience includes representing children and families in poverty in access to health care, public benefits, special education, housing and family law as well as juvenile delinquency and prison condition cases, and other general civil law matters. She has also been involved in local, state, and national policy work in the areas of access to health care, education, and juvenile justice.
Before joining Loyola, Professor Mitchell spent three years as a clinical teaching fellow with the Pediatric Advocacy Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, a medical-legal partnership clinic serving pediatric patients and their families. She previously served as the Legal Director of the Toledo Medical Legal Partnership for Children at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality and Legal Aid of Western Ohio in Toledo, Ohio. Professor Mitchell started her legal career as a staff attorney with Legal Aid Chicago and then as a staff attorney and policy director at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. Following Hurricane Katrina, Professor Mitchell worked as a fellow at The Public Law Center at Tulane University School of Law focusing on economic and housing revitalization efforts in New Orleans.
Professor Mitchell has presented at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of topics including upstream advocacy, medical-legal partnerships, Medicaid and child access to health care, special education, collaborative interdisciplinary advocacy, interprofessional education, health equity, juvenile competency standards, and healthy housing advocacy. Her primary research interests relate to the intersection of poverty, health, and legal advocacy; interdisciplinary approaches to advocacy; upstream lawyering; Medicaid and access to health care; interprofessional education; racism and health equity; and the impact of school disciplinary practices on children with disabilities. Professor Mitchell has been admitted to practice law in Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
Degrees
BA magna cum laude, Beloit College
JD cum laude, Northwestern University School of Law
Program Areas
Clinics & Experiential Learning
Poverty Law
Health Law
Interprofessional Education
Courses Taught
Health Justice Lab
Health Justice Project Clinic
Advanced Health Justice Project Clinic
Access to Health Care
Selected Publications
Medical-Legal Partnerships Reinvigorate Systems Lawyering Using an Upstream Approach, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Special Symposium Issue: The Past, Present and future of Medical-Legal Partnerships, forthcoming 2023 (with Debra Chopp).
Filling the gaps: A community case study in using an interprofessional approach and community-academic partnerships to address COVID-19-related inequities; Front. Public Health, 20 July 2023, Volume 11 - 2003 (With Kutchma M (primary author), Perez J, Stranges E, Steele K, Garis T, Prost A, Simbul S, Choo-Kang C, Gbikpi Benissan DG, Smith-Haney G, Mora N, Watson M, Griffith T, Booker N, Harrington A, Blair A, Luke A, Silva A)
An Interprofessional Antiracist Curriculum is Paramount to Addressing Racial Inequities in Health, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Volume 50, Issue 1: Health Law and Anti-Racism: Reckoning and Response, Spring 2022, pp. 109 – 116 (with Abigail Silva, Jessica Simpson, and Maya Watson)
The Promise and Failures of Children’s Medicaid and the Role of Medical-Legal Partnerships as Monitors and Advocates, 30 Health Matrix Iss. 1 (2020).
Counseling Clients on Advance Directives at the End of Life: An Interprofessional Course for Social Work and Law Students, 4 J Health Sci Educ 3 (2020)
“We Can’t Tolerate That Behavior in This School!” The Consequences of Excluding Children with Behavioral Health Conditions and the Limits of the Law, 41 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 3 (2017)
RECENT PRESENTATIONS:
Moving from Individual Impacts to Policy Impacts, Medical-Legal Partnerships: Equity, Evaluation and Evolution Conference, March 3, 2023, Yale Law School, New Haven, CT (with Bethany Hamilton, Kara R. Finck, Lisa Puglisi, William Sage, and Jay Sicklick).
Health Equity in Action, American Health Law Association Fundamentals of Health Law, Chicago, IL, November 10, 2022 (with Asha B. Sciezlo and John Smith).
Interdisciplinary Approaches for Advancing Access to Justice, White House Counsel’s Series on Building the Next Generation of Public Interest Lawyers, Teaching for Impact: Advancing Access to Justice Through Experiential Legal Education: Panel #2, Webinar, June 15, 2022 (with Dana Remus – White House Counsel, Alina Ball, Katherine Garvey, Marcy L, Karin, Jeff Selbin, and Todd Wildermuth).
Anti-Racism Teaching and Practice, Health Law and Anti-Racism: Reckoning and Response Symposium, Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics, American Society of Law Medicine & Ethics, Penn Law, March 30, 2022 (with Seema Mohapatra, Jessica L. Simpson, and Medha D. Makhlouf).
Medicaid Enforcement, Rule of Law Institute Fellow Presentation, Loyola University Chicago, March 14, 2022.
Upstreaming Legal Care, Illinois MLP Task Force, March 11, 2022.
Advocating for Children’s Access to Health Care: Medicaid for Children, Center for Community & Global Health Seminar Series, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, January 19, 2022 (with Lindsay Hill & David Faich).
A survey of state laws, rules and regulations governing fair hearings for Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF recipients, APHA 2021 Annual Meeting & Expo, October 25, 2021.
Engaging Students in Race and Health Equity Education and Practice, ASLME Health Law Professors Conference, June 10, 2021 (with Abigail Silva & Maya Watson).
Cultivating Professional Identity in the First Year of Law School, AALS Clinical Conference, May 1, 2021 (with Miranda Johnson, Jaqueline Ross, Carla Coupet, and Josie Gough).
Innovations in Integrated Care: Medical Legal Partnerships, Dominican University, April 16, 2021 (with Maya Watson).
Innovating to Address COVID-19, Webinar Series: Beyond Crisis Management Preparing for What’s Next, Loyola University Quinlan School of Business & Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health, Chicago, IL, July 9, 2020 (with Seth Green, Carolyn Kmet, Amy Luke, Elaine Morrato, Elizabeth Stranges, Abigail Silva, and Zach Waickman).