Charity Scott Obituary, Death, Professor of Law at SGU, Has Sadly Passed Away

Charity Scott Obituary, Death – Sadly, today we learned that Professor Charity Scott of Georgia State University had gone away. Charity served as columnist, author, and guest editor for JLME in addition to her role as past president of ASLME. In addition to being an excellent educator and friend, she was awarded the Jay Healey Prize. Charity, you are cherished beyond measure.

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Kennesaw State University; Master of Science in Conflict Management from Harvard University; Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School; Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University; and Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School (Phi Beta Kappa, graduated with distinction, honors in comparative literature) Charity Scott was the Catherine C. Henson Professor of Law until she announced her retirement in June of 2020.

In addition to her primary faculty post in the College of Law, she also held adjunct appointments in the School of Public Health and the J. Mack Robinson College of Commerce’s Institute of Health Administration. She was the very first director of the Center for Law, Health, and Society (2004–2014).

Since starting at Georgia State Law in 1987, Scott has taught many courses on health law and policy, bioethics, tort law, negotiation, mediation, and mindfulness. Their most recent course together is called “The Reflective Lawyer,” and she is currently teaching it. Scott has spoken on health law issues before the American Bar Association, American Health Lawyers Association,

American Medical Association, Association of American Law Schools, Federal Judicial Center, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, State Bar of Georgia, Georgia Academy of Healthcare Attorneys, and the Health Law Institute, to name a few. Among the many health law-related issues she’s covered in her writing are patient confidentiality, hospital litigation, bioethics, and the law, healthcare antitrust, and public policy.

Scott has received numerous awards and recognitions. In 2014–2015, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded her work as the program director and lead faculty for a new national faculty fellowship program in public health law education. A member of the American Law Institute, she was selected. Scott was honored with the Health Law Community Service Award in 2018 by the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care. In 2016, she received a community service award for her “vision, inspiration, and resourcefulness” in establishing the Health Law Partnership.

In 2015, Scott received the David J. Maleski Award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Law. In 2010, she was honored with the Georgia Health Care Ethics Consortium’s Heroes in Healthcare Ethics Award. In 2006, she received the Jay Healey Distinguished Health Law Professor Award from the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. In 2004, she was honored for her dedication to the academic community by receiving the Georgia State University Distinguished Service Award. In addition, she was named Professor of the Year by the university’s Student Bar Association.

Scott is active in the community and contributes his time to the American Bar Association in several capacities, including serving on the ABA Health Law Section’s governing council. She was the first chair of the Task Force for Alternative Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management in the Healthcare Industry. For many years, she led the Georgia State Bar’s health law section and edited the magazine for that special group, which focuses on federal and state health law matters.

Scott has been instrumental in developing programs to improve law students’ health and well-being at the university’s College of Law. Since 2015, she has led an annual mindfulness training workshop for law students as part of the college’s expanded wellness programme. She’s an author and speaker on the topic of legal mindfulness.

Scott helped establish the Health Law Partnership (HeLP), a program that provides educational opportunities and community service to those living in the Atlanta area. In 2004, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, and the Center for Law, Health & Society at Georgia State Law came together to form HeLP, a novel model of multidisciplinary community cooperation. Via on-site legal services clinics in Children’s hospitals,

HeLP seeks to improve the health of low-income children and their families by fostering interdisciplinary practice and education between legal and health-related professionals. By combining the expertise of attorneys with that of the medical staff at hospitals, HeLP is able to offer a comprehensive range of services that target the many factors that affect the health of children from low-income families. Scott also served as the director for the first five years of the HeLP Legal Services Clinic, which he founded for law and health graduate students (2005-2010).