New York transplant Campbell takes over Health Law Institute

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

Sept. 19, 2013

In her new office at The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, a thousand miles from where she grew up in Ithaca, N.Y., Amy Campbell is getting used to all things Southern.

Most of them, anyway, making exceptions for “the humidity and the bugs,” she said. “Other than that, I’m fine.”

Campbell is a new associate professor for the law school and the director of the Health Law Institute, a facet of the college still in its nascent stages of development but with a distinct vision for the future.

The institute looks to become a regionally, if not nationally, recognized center for health law and policy. It will “focus on education and a strong health law curriculum that has traditional doctrinal courses, but also emphasizes practical skills and learning experiences with our rich health law community in the region,” Campbell said.

The health care community is rich within Memphis, as is the legal community, and Campbell hopes to tap into both, creating an interdisciplinary program that calls upon resources within The University of Memphis and other regional institutions such as The University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Health law is a growing field, and the implications cross all industries when one considers corporate human resources concerns such as employee benefits and policies that seem to be in daily flux. There is plenty to challenge any law student with the “traditional, transactional health care work – where you’re working with health systems or hospitals – and that, I think, is going to be an important area, and physician practices and the like,” she said, adding that “… because of the proliferation of health laws, if you will, there are certainly a lot of areas for litigation, too, or sort of the fraud and abuse side.”

An area of focus within health law that particularly interests Campbell – and that she sees as a burgeoning field within health law in general – is in looking at the health of not only individuals, but also of society as a whole . . . (read more)