Kristen Underhill, JD, DPhil, MSc
Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Associate Professor of Population & Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health
Biography
Kristen Underhill is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Her scholarship focuses on health law, with a particular interest in how the law influences individual decisions about risk and health behavior.
Underhill examines how laws and regulations affect individual choices by arranging incentives, shaping opportunities, influencing underlying preferences, and communicating information about social norms. Recent and ongoing research areas include Medicaid § 1115 waiver programs; interactions between incentives and intrinsic motivations including racial bias; research ethics and the resolution of research-related disputes; medical mistrust and access to PrEP for HIV prevention; and nondiscrimination laws in health care.
Underhill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2011, serving as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. She also holds a D.Phil. in evidence-based social intervention from the University of Oxford, and she completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral research fellowship at Brown University’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies.