Bio
Dr. Benjamin A. Barsky is Associate Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, where he teaches Criminal Law and U.S. Healthcare System & the Law and serves as Consortium Advisory Board member of the UCSF-UC Law SF Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.
Professor Barsky’s research centers on health, inequality, and law — a domain he studies using different social scientific methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Of late, his research has investigated the U.S. health system’s enmeshment with criminal enforcement institutions, with a focus on policing and public safety governance, jail and prison health service delivery, and controlled substance law and policy.
Professor Barsky is co-leading two grant-funded research projects pertaining to these issues. The first, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, focuses on unarmed first-response interventions in health-related crises. The second, supported by the Commonwealth Fund, studies the effects of state Medicaid expansions on mortality among formerly incarcerated people. His award-winning research has also been supported by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Immediately before joining the UC Law San Francisco faculty, Professor Barsky was an Annual Fellow at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and an Initiative Fellow at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Health Policy at Harvard University. His dissertation thesis was entitled “Essays on Criminal Health Law and Policy.” Originally from Montréal, Québec, Professor Barsky became a naturalized U.S. citizen in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2015.
Education
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Harvard University
Ph.D. in Health Policy -
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
J.D. -
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Master of Bioethics -
Johns Hopkins University
B.A. in Public Health Studies and Psychological & Brain Sciences