Carmel Shachar named assistant clinical professor of law

Originally published by Harvard Law Today on 4/14/2023.

Shachar will also serve as faculty director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law and faculty director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, effective July 1.

A lecturer on law at Harvard since 2017, Shachar focuses her scholarship on law and health policy, in particular the regulation of access to care for vulnerable individuals, the use of telehealth and digital health products, and the application of public health ethics to real world questions.

“I am delighted that Carmel Shachar will join our faculty this summer as assistant clinical professor of law and faculty director of our Health Law and Policy Clinic,” said John F. Manning ’85, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean of Harvard Law School. “She has brought tremendous expertise, deep wisdom, and impactful leadership to her health law and policy work at the Petrie-Flom Center, and I know that she will bring those same qualities to her teaching and to the vital work of the clinic.”

As Petrie Flom’s executive director, Shachar oversees the center’s sponsored research portfolio, event programming, fellowships, student engagement, development, and a range of other projects and collaborations. During her tenure, she designed, recruited for, and launched both the Center’s Health Care General Counsel Roundtable and the Center’s Advisory Board. She was also involved heavily with the center’s Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law, and its Diagnosing in the Home Initiative.

“The Health Law and Policy Clinic has taken such a leadership role in access to care and public health policy,” Shachar said. “I am excited to work with Harvard Law School students to continue this vital work on behalf of the most vulnerable patients.”

As head of the law school’s Health Law and Policy Clinic, Shachar will continue the strong work of the Health Law and Policy Clinic, including ensuring that individuals with lower incomes can access care and treatment; fighting discrimination through impact litigation; and addressing social determinants of health and health-related social needs to help improve health equity, and mitigate health disparities. Shachar, who has written about reproductive rights topics such as the privacy of abortion records and the intersection of telehealth and reproductive care, will also build new areas of focus, including a reproductive rights portfolio centered on the changing legal and medical landscape.

She has co-edited several books, including “Innovation and Protection: The Future of Medical Device Regulation,”“Consumer Genetics: Ethical and Legal Considerations of New Technologies,” “Disability, Health, Law, and Bioethics,” “Transparency in Health and Health Care in the United States,” and “COVID-19 and the Law.”

Her work has been published in leading health and law journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature Medicine, and the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, and she has been interviewed by major media outlets, such as BBC News, Politico, CNN, and Slate. 

As Petrie Flom’s executive director, she oversees the center’s sponsored research portfolio, event programming, fellowships, student engagement, development, and a range of other projects and collaborations. During her tenure, she designed, recruited for, and launched both the Center’s Health Care General Counsel Roundtable and the Center’s Advisory Board. 

Shachar joined Harvard Law School in 2014 and served as a clinical instructor at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, where she helped lead the Health Law and Policy Clinic’s access to care and Affordable Care Act implementation work. During her time as a clinical instructor, Shachar focused on analyzing and translating health policy issues and opportunities for a broad range of audiences, including many federal and state-level health policy coalitions. She also coordinated and led a major multi-state initiative to document discriminatory benefit designs on the health insurance marketplaces.

Shachar has a B.A. in bioethics and religion from Wellesley College. After earning a joint J.D./M.P.H degree from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Law School, where she was a student fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center, Shachar served as a clerk for the Hon. Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She later practiced health care law at Ropes & Gray, in Boston. 

She currently serves on the board of the Fishing Partnership Support Services, and she is a member of the Steering Committee of Scientific Citizenship Initiative. She also sits on the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.