News Archive
Course Created Through Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant Examines MLP Funding, Medicaid Coverage of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Indiana
05/27/2015
Funding Medical-Legal Partnerships in Indiana, changes to how Medicaid funding works for those coping with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and other issues were examined by students from a variety of disciplines on the IUPUI campus during Spring 2015. They were all in a course designed by Professor Heather McCabe, ’03. McCabe was awarded one of 10 faculty fellowships funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through Georgia State University College of Law and its Center for Law Health & Society. McCabe teaches as an adjunct professor at IU McKinney and is an assistant professor at the IU School of Social Work. Her course was designed for law, social work, and public health students to build skills in public health law, policy, and advocacy.
“There were 10 phenomenal students in the class,” Professor McCabe said. “They all worked so hard.” The work also is intriguing, she said, because of the interdisciplinary communication that went on among students from various disciplines on campus. “It’s exciting to think about what the possibilities are now” that this kind of groundwork has been done.
The course was a success from the students’ standpoint as well.
“I knew I was going to need to work in interprofessional settings,” said Alyssa D. Servies, an IU McKinney student who is a 2017 J.D. and M.P.H. candidate. “I also wanted to learn how to utilize my degrees together.”
Dean Andrew Klein was impressed with the course and the work the students were able to accomplish.
“This course was a welcome addition to our growing offerings in the health arena, specifically public health law,” Dean Klein said. “The fact that it was interprofessional and experiential in design provided an added benefit to our law students’ learning experiences.”
He isn’t the only one who has been pleased by the course and its outcomes.
“I’ve been impressed by the ambitious goals laid out for the class and the students, even more impressed by how well the students met those goals, and the enthusiasm the students had for being engaged in this novel interdisciplinary experience,” said Professor Ross Silverman of IU’s Fairbanks School of Public Health. He has a secondary appointment to the IU McKinney faculty. “So often, courses focus on the granular nuggets of topic-specific knowledge a faculty member wishes to pass on to her students.” That was not the case here, Silverman said. The students in McCabe’s class developed the kinds of skills that will help them later work toward eliminating complex, community-based public health problems by working with colleagues from a variety of disciplines, he said.
McCabe practiced social work at Riley Hospital for Children before entering law school. After graduation, she was Executive Director of the Indiana Partnership to Prevent Violent Injury and Death, a public health research project at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Clarian Health, and Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She served as the Executive Director of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Hall Center for Law and Health until 2009, when she joined the faculty of the Indiana University School of Social Work. Her primary areas of interest are public health law, violent injury prevention and research, and work with children with developmental disabilities and/or medical fragility.
