“The movement for health equity is not for the faint of heart,” said Daniel E. Dawes, the senior vice president of Global Health and founding dean of the School of Global Health at Meharry Medical College. “It requires a commitment to understanding, action, and resilience.”
Dawes delivered the inaugural Charity Scott Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, at Georgia State University College of Law. The endowed lecture series is named for the late Charity Scott, professor emerita and founding director of the Center for Law, Health & Society, honoring her legacy of excellence in health law scholarship and service to the health law community.
“The level of humanity that Charity infused into the practice and study of health law is truly inspirational, and it was not optional if you worked with her, for her or near her. Through this endowed lecture series, we continue her tradition of coming together in community,” said Courtney Anderson, interim dean of the College of Law, who praised the long-reaching impact of Scott’s vision for building relationships across the discipline of health law.
Scott’s deep understanding of systemic health disparities made Dawes a natural choice to be the speaker for this event. As an internationally recognized health policy expert and advocate for health reform, his career has been dedicated to achieving health equity through law and policy, work that reflects the vision Scott championed.
Dawes’ lecture, entitled “Forever on the Path,” highlighted several health disparities that persist across the U.S. and the historical factors that have led to those outcomes. The title was inspired by the text of James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and was a nod to Charity Scott’s commitment to health equity and justice.
Daniel E. Dawes delivers the inaugural Charity Scott Lecture in the Ceremonial Courtroom at Georgia State Law.
To set the stage for the audience, Dawes opened with a sobering statistic. “Georgia, if it were its own country, would rank 90th out of 227 countries in terms of life expectancy,” he said. Taking it a step further, he explained that parts of the state would be closer to the end of the list given the same comparison; Bankhead, a neighborhood west of Atlanta for example, would rank 211th.
Life expectancy, however, was not his only example of unequal health outcomes. Dawes emphasized how infant mortality is more precarious for African American babies, how women are often underdiagnosed for adverse health conditions like cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders, and how ageism in health care can lead to misdiagnoses or delayed treatment for serious conditions.
Going beyond individual health outcomes alone, Dawes referenced his own research at Meharry Medical College along with Deloitte economists that calculated the cost of racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes at more than $477 billion in excess health spending in 2024. “Georgia is, in fact, in the top five states that bear the greatest burden of health inequities in this country at $21 billion,” he said.
Dawes argued that discrepancies of this scale are not explainable simply through genetics or individual choices but are rooted in social policies and structures. His lecture traced the origins of many systemic health inequities back to American colonial-era laws that transferred enslaved status from mother to child, laws that prohibited enslaved and indigenous people from growing their own food and earning their own money, and laws prohibiting their education with an emphasis on literacy.
“Dawes’s [presentation] made me realize the power we have as future health law professionals to not only address inequities but to actively shape the policies that dismantle them,” explained Jordyn Cooper-Greenwood (J.D. ‘26), co-president of the Student Health Law Association.
The speaker connected these early social and legal mechanisms of discrimination to modern day policies with negative health outcomes like home loan denials, interstate highway development and regional insurance cost differences. “I believe that only policy can fix what policy broke in the first place,” he said, noting that when the U.S. government has passed equity-focused health policies, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Affordable Care Act, health outcomes improved across all demographics in the country.
He identified a turning point during the push for the Affordable Care Act, where advocates realized that health equity could not be achieved solely by making moral arguments. Successfully linking mental health issues to national security concerns proved a winning strategy for reformers after decades of struggle. “The success of any advocacy effort in our country ... has depended on how palatable they have been to commercial interests, and whether we can show an investment value to the government,” he said.
“Today, I believe that we are in the fourth awakening for health equity in the United States,” he said. Referencing alternating periods of progress in health reforms and the resultant social backlash, Dawes predicted a growing social desire to address interconnected factors that impact health outcomes on structural levels rather than just individually.
Scott's family, including Constance Harrell Shreckengost (center) and Evans Harrell (right), attended the lecture endowed by their generous gift.
“By continuing to ask the right questions, leveraging partnerships and advocating for just policies, we can work toward a future where every community has access to the care and resources they need.”
The Charity Scott Lecture Series is endowed by a generous gift from Professor Emerita Scott’s family to honor her life and contributions to health law. Through this annual program, the College of Law is able to attract leading scholars and rising stars in health law, presenting their research and expertise directly to Georgia State Law students, faculty, alumni and the broader community.
Written by Lauren Allred with contributions from Kate Chesser (J.D. '26)