Allison Korn
Allison Korn is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Health Justice Clinic at Duke University School of Law. She joined the Duke Law faculty in 2022 from UCLA School of Law, where she was the assistant dean for experiential education and director of the Food Law & Policy Clinic.
Korn’s teaching and scholarship focus on law, policy, and practices that impact vulnerable individuals’ and communities’ access to justice, including the collision of the U.S. healthcare and criminal legal systems. She also writes about emerging methods in clinical teaching.
Korn began her academic career as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the University of Baltimore School of Law. As a practitioner, she was a member of the inaugural class of family defense attorneys at the Bronx Defenders in New York, representing parents charged with abuse and neglect and fighting against unnecessary removal of children from their families. As a staff attorney with Pregnancy Justice (formerly National Advocates for Pregnant Women), Korn advocated for the rights and dignity of pregnant and parenting persons prosecuted for drug use.
Korn is a graduate of Roanoke College, where she was the David Bittle Scholar, and earned her J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law. While in law school, Korn co-founded the Student Hurricane Network, a national network of more than 5,500 law students advancing the cause of social justice in communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Session
Title: When Traditional Methods Fail: Creative Medical-Legal Approaches to Improving Access to Care for Persons with Opioid Use Disorder
Background:
Throughout history, attorneys and physicians have joined together to enact change. A team of lawyers, social workers and physicians at Duke University developed a partnership in 2023 focused on supporting individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). Project COMET, Caring for Patients with Opioid Misuse through Evidence-Based Treatment, is a hospitalist-led initiative at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC, striving to improve the care of hospitalized patients with OUD. The Health Justice Clinic (HJC) is a law clinic course at Duke Law School addressing the legal needs of clients subjected to discrimination. Despite intensive efforts, our partnership has met significant institutional resistance, suggesting deep seated reluctance to support this type of work and entrenched stigma associated with individuals who use drugs. Furthermore, the incoming U.S. presidential administration’s political agenda includes dismantling federal government agencies including the Department of Justice (DOJ), whose Civil Rights Division historically has enforced Americans with Disability Act (ADA) protections. These real and growing challenges underscore why creative, integrated strategies like ours must persist in order to effectively assist individuals with OUD.
Objectives:
Project COMET and the HJC first connected to address barriers to treatment faced by individuals with OUD through various legal strategies, including DOJ intervention. Flagrant discrimination has led to longer lengths of hospital stays, discharging to suboptimal environments, and restricting the use of life-saving medications. To begin, we aim to understand how these and other barriers to services affect hospitalized patients with OUD by conducting patient interviews, followed by a qualitative data analysis. This analysis will not only inform legal strategies, but also interdisciplinary advocacy and policy reform.
Methods:
To allow our team to conduct patient interviews, we submitted a research project to our institution’s review board (IRB) in fall 2023. However, we have met persistent institutional resistance throughout the IRB process. As of January 2024, our project remains stalled and we are unable to collect essential data. After a series of meetings aiming to resolve IRB questions, our project remains under review. We now look to other movements led by attorney-physician partnerships for inspiration as we try and overcome these challenges. For instance, during the 1980s, there were documented cases of IRB resistance to approving qualitative research focusing on HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination.
Implications:
These institutional and anticipated political challenges demonstrate how our work has taken on heightened importance. Undaunted, we are working to adapt to these unknowns, both within our own institution and in the broader landscape of discrimination against individuals with OUD. Applying lessons learned from past movements for interdisciplinary change, we anticipate adaptations will include strenghtening community partnerships, emphasizing our work’s connection to local public health outcomes, nurturing strong advocates within our institution, including affected individuals in the research design and implementation process. We hope to share our experiences with researchers in other institutions and across disciplines in hopes of overcoming widespread resistance to supporting and accompanying persons with OUD.