Critical race theory has recently received a lot of attention from both its critics and advocates. This session will cover some of the core insights offered by critical race theorists, drawing on examples impacting the health and well-being of people of color. Applying a critical race theory lens, we also examine the promise and limits of recent declarations of racism as a public health crisis to address systemic racism. This discussion will answer the question: What does critical race theory have to do with public health?

April Shaw, JD, PhD

Dr. April Shaw is a staff attorney at the Network for Public Health Law’s Northern Region Office. She has expertise in breaking down the policy impacts of laws and appellate writing. Her current work focuses on racial health equity and suicide prevention. She is particularly interested in thinking through how multiple inequities intersect to create systemic disparities. April’s experience in appellate writing comes from working as a senior law clerk at the Arizona Court of Appeals and writing appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals. She previously worked at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, drafting white papers to assist with defrauded students’ defense to repayment claims, and as the Research Scholar at the Center for Public Health Law & Policy at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

April earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder, specializing in social and political philosophy with a focus on gender justice and critical race theory. She received her J.D. with distinction from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where she won the Sarah Weddington Writing Prize for New Student Scholarship in Reproductive Rights Law, a national writing competition. She wrote her dissertation on severe global poverty and human rights.

April Shaw, JD, PhD

Betsy Lawton, JD

Betsy Lawton is a senior staff attorney at the Network for Public Health Law, where she provides legal technical assistance, delivers presentations and lectures, and builds connections in many areas of public health law. Before joining the Network, Betsy spent over a decade working to improve water quality as an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) and the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), where she focused on Clean Water Act implementation and enforcement, reducing agricultural pollution, and preventing drinking water contamination, and represented a broad range of individuals and communities facing water pollution problems.

Lawton received her JD and a Certificate of Environmental Law, from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and her Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame.

Betsy Lawton, JD