Description
Professor Dame Hazel Genn DBE KC (hon) FBA LLD
There is plenty of evidence that social and economic problems with a legal dimension can create or exacerbate ill health and that ill-health itself often creates legal problems. UK research documents gross and widening inequalities in health, largely explained by social determinants such as income, housing, employment, and education. Although legal issues are embedded in most major determinants of public health, law has been largely invisible in social determinants discourse, research and interventions. Free social welfare legal services have an important role to play in mitigating many of the socio-economic determinants that disproportionately impact the health of low income and vulnerable groups. We need to move on from describing the problem of health inequalities and focus on practical interventions that break cycles of deprivation and address health-harming legal needs. This presentation will focus on a growing international practitioner-led movement of Health Justice Partnership through which lawyers work with healthcare teams to address the root causes of ill health rather than focusing on physical and psychological manifestations of negative social determinants. Using examples of successful UK collaborations between health and free legal services we need to discuss how to break down barriers that inhibit multi-professional approaches to health improvement and devise strategies for sustainable development.
Biographical note
Professor Dame Hazel Genn DBE, QC (Hon), FBA, LLD
Dame Hazel Genn is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies in the Faculty of Laws at UCL. She was Dean of the Faculty 2008-2017 and is Director of the UCL Centre for Access to Justice, which she founded in 2013. She is a leading empirical legal researcher and expert on access to civil and administrative justice – author of Paths to Justice: What People Do and Think About Going to Law (1999) a seminal study of public access to justice which has since been replicated in 27 jurisdictions around the world. Her work has had a global influence on policymakers in relation to the provision of legal aid and the social and health effects of unmet legal need. Between 2016-2018 she developed the activities of the UCL Centre for Access to Justice to include an innovative partnership with a GP practice in East London delivering free social welfare legal advice to low income and vulnerable patients within the practice. She is currently Directing a National Strategy for Health Justice Partnership, funded by The Legal Education Foundation. Working in collaboration with UCL Health of the Public she recently launched a Law for Health stream of work https://www.ucl.ac.uk/health-of-public/research/ucl-health-public-communities/law-health with a report entitled: Law for Health: Using free legal services to tackle the social determinants of health https://www.ucl.ac.uk/health-of-public/sites/health_of_public/files/law_for_health_hjp_final.pdf
She has been appointed to numerous public service roles concerned with the justice system, including the Judicial Appointments Commission (2006-2011) appointing judiciary at all levels including to the Court of Appeal and UK Supreme Court. She was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 2003-7. She served for eight years as Deputy Chair and then Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Research Grants Board. She has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2000 and was Vice President and Chair of its Communications and Publications Committee 2008-11. In recognition of her contribution to the justice system, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2000 and appointed DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2006. In 2006 she was also appointed Queen’s Counsel Honoris Causa and in 2008 she was elected Honorary Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn.
