Feature Interview
Leigh Kamore Haynes, JD, LLM, MPH

For our June issue, we had a chat with Leigh Kamore Haynes, a Simmons MPH adjunct professor and course designer focused on our health equity, policy, and practice coursework.

Could you tell us a bit about your roles here in the MPH@Simmons program?
I am the course lead for a few courses, including the intro class, Health Equity and Social Justice and a few other courses with a heavy “theory to practice” focus. I was excited to be course designer for the course Public Health Law and Human Rights. It felt important to design this course because students really need to know (1) how things work behind the scenes and then (2) how to initiate change. The goal of this course is to expose students to the legal landscape of PH law, constitutional law and administrative law, but also litigation and different avenues to make change.  

Are there any particular theories or focuses you found working their way into these courses, based on your background or philosophies?
Human rights is a big part of the coursework; I tried to convey the international principles, the legal regimes and treaties but also put a focus on how we can all incorporate human rights into what we do in the PH realm, be that anti-discrimination, creating accountability and transparency or encouraging participation. The US is not party to many of the international human rights treaties, but as PH professionals and specialists, we can do that work to create and provide a path for realizing the right to health and really all human rights. Solidarity, as well, is an important part of this work; all the great social movement leaders have put forth that none of us are free until all of us are free.

What has the experience of teaching at Simmons been like, especially considering how PH issues have come to the mainstream media forefront, be it COVID-19, racial violence or environmental damage?
Overall, I have felt intellectually and personally free to present and incorporate my ideas and processes. There is a lot of space here at Simmons to think outside the box, to focus on new and emerging inequities while also allowing students to think in different ways. I've really been able to bring my authentic self to the program.

More specifically, it was interesting to teach the Community Organizing and Healthy Equity and Social Justice courses while the US was reeling from the murder of George Floyd. It was heavy and there were a lot of intricacies connecting the courses and the headlines. The theories were being experienced very personally by some of the students, seeing all the patterns we talk about in the courses brought to life. It was tough but there is such a great community vibe — even in a virtual classroom setting — which helped us all process what we were living through in the context of the course material.

Have there been any significant pieces of classwork you have seen from students so far?
One student who took the Health Law and Human Rights course in 2022 was working to develop a legal intervention (their final project) to improve access to health care, specifically for impoverished folks for whom English is not a first language, a significantly challenging issue. Her viewpoint and creativity was very cool & really impressed my colleague who helps me teach the course and is also a practice attorney down in New Mexico. 

Jeanmerli, that's their name, identified the lack of continuity or even coherence around where people can get the right healthcare information, especially if they are poor, if English isn’t their first language, or if they don’t have access to internet. She described the difficulty of having to navigate a maze of places to visit and call to find the appropriate information. To address this problem, she had the idea of a state supported one stop "station" of sorts that would help people at least access the information they need more simply.… kind of like an ATM for health information and forms. 

My colleague from New Mexico who was helping teach the class shared Jeanmerli’s strategic thinking with someone who works with the state of New Mexico, and they are moving forward with turning the idea into an execution that will work for their communities, especially people living in rural areas. It was great to see the creativity and insight being applied to a very real problem.

Outside of Simmons, you stay busy as well...
I am a longtime activist with The People's Health Movement (PHM), an international network that advocates for the right to health and pushes for action around global level social determinants of health. One of the projects I’m working on now with the North America group is a research project to undertake a social network analysis of private actors in health to better understand how they are driving commercialization and financialization of health in the US and other parts of the world. With the PHM Europe region I’m part of a team organizing a conference to explore the possibility of public production of medicines at the European level improve access and affordability of medicines which could avoid the shortages and distribution issues we saw with COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

I’m also a member of the Framework Convention on Global Health Alliance. I've been a part of the Alliance for about 5 years and served as chair for about three years until May 2023. The FCGH Alliance is an NGO that's made up of a group of individuals advocating for a new treaty on global health which aims to address health inequalities and inequities — and aiming to secure the right to health for everyone — through human rights principles such as increasing participation by populations in decisions about their health, increasing government accountability. The reason I support and promote the FCGH treaty proposal is because it's focused on understanding and meeting the needs of local people through a ground-up process that contributes to their ability to fully live their lives.

Thank you Leigh for all that you've contributed to the Simmons community!