News Archive
IndyBar Sponsors Student Competition Created by Hall Center Coordinator
04/23/2021
The IndyBar Health Care & Life Sciences Section is inviting students at Indiana law schools to participate in the first-ever Law Student Writing/Oral Competition.
Students are asked to consider an area of maternal and child health that Indiana could improve upon and discuss a law that could be used to implement changes necessary to better serve Indiana women and children.
The competition will put students’ legal writing skills to the test while also getting the chance to network with and get to know some practitioners and IndyBar members currently practicing in the health law field, according to Angela Covele, coordinator for the IU McKinney Hall Center for Law and Health.
The writing prompt—and the competition itself—was created by Covele as a project for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) graduate-level interdisciplinary leadership training program at Riley Child Development Center.
LEND Training is designed for people who will advocate on behalf of people with neuro-developmental disabilities, a broad category that includes autism, anxiety, Down’s Syndrome, attention-deficit disorder, and many other conditions.
Covele has several family members with neuro-developmental disabilities and believes LEND training will be helpful in providing support to them and others in the community. She’s been working on LEND certification and the project for nearly nine months, with the support of Hall Center Executive Director Nicolas Terry and Associate Director Brittany Kelly.
Taking the competition from a concept to finalizing the details and taking it live was more complicated than Covele anticipated, but she’s pleased with the potential outcome.
“The day that IndyBar called to tell me that registration was open, I was ready to do cartwheels in my living room,” Covele says.
“As a state, Indiana’s maternal health and overall health of women and children rankings are low, which has a direct impact on outcomes for individuals with neuro-developmental disabilities,” she says. “Hopefully, students will come up with ideas to help Indiana get out of that bottom rung and improve lives for people in Indiana.”
For more information and competition guidelines, contact Kari Hartman, IndyBar’s Associate Executive Director, by email at khartman@indybar.org or phone (317) 269-2000.
