Faculty and Administration Profiles

Kate Mitchell

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

Upstream Lawyering: A Framework for Poverty Law, DePaul Law Review, forthcoming Fall 2024. 

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, Volume 51, Issue 4, Winter 2023, pp. 810 - 816 (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:

Upstream Lawyering, ASLME Health Law Professors Conference, June 7, 2024, Philadelphia, PA. 
 
Interdisciplinary Law Clinics: What Works and What Doesn’t, Unfinished Arcs: Resistance & Resilience Amid Backlash: AALS 46th Annual Conference on Clinical Legal Education, May 3, 2024, Saint Louis, MO. 
 
Lessons from the Past: Using History and Field Study to Inform Interdisciplinary Health Equity Advocacy, Unfinished Arcs: Resistance & Resilience Amid Backlash: AALS 46th Annual Conference on Clinical Legal Education, May 3, 2024, Saint Louis, MO (with Alice Setrini). 
 
Advancing Health Equity Through Interprofessional Teams: A Mental Health Case Study Experience, Online Interprofessional Webinar, Loyola University Chicago Schools of Education, Health Sciences and Public Health, Nursing, Medicine, Law, and Social Work, April 10, 2024 (Served on event planning committee, as small group facilitator, and plenary panelist.) 
 
Getting Mental Health Care Covered: Advocating for Patients, Loyola Medicine Psychiatry Department and Psychiatric Residency Program, February 19, 2024, Maywood, Illinois. 
 
Health Equity in Action, American Health Law Association Fundamentals of Health Law, Chicago, IL, November 7, 2023 (with Asha B. Sciezlo and Kimberly Ramseur). 
 
Conversations on the Ground, Beazley Symposium on Health Law and Policy: The Impact of Fraud and Abuse Law on Health Equity, Presented by the Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy in conjunction with Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, October 27, 2023, Chicago, IL (Moderator of panel featuring Janis Anfossi, David Cade, Asha Scielzo, and Neal Shaw). 
 
Advocating for Young People with Mental Health and Behavioral Health Challenges, Loyola Medicine Psychiatry Department and Psychiatric Residency Program, October 9, 2023, Maywood, Illinois. 
 
Utilizing Experiential Learning Tools to Support Goals of ABA Standard 303c in Health Law Courses, ASLME Health Law Professors Conference, June 7, 2023, Baltimore, MD (with Alice Setrini). 
 
Interdisciplinary Clinics: Ideas and Current Practices, Hope as a Discipline: AALS 45th Annual Conference on Clinical Legal Education, April 29, 2023, San Francisco, CA (with Min Jian Huang). 
 
Teaching Upstream Lawyering, Hope as a Discipline: AALS 45th Annual Conference on Clinical Legal Education, April 28, 2023, San Francisco, CA (with Debra Chopp and Jenna Prochaska). 

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).