American Health Dispatch
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Current Fellows
Addiction & Overdose
Deborah Steinberg
Bloomberg Fellow
is a Senior Health Policy Attorney at the Legal Action Center (LAC) in Washington, D.C. She supports LAC’s efforts to expand access to comprehensive and equitable treatment for substance use disorder at both the state and federal levels and initiatives to enforce the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in all payer systems. Deborah leads LAC’s Medicare Addiction Parity Project, which seeks to improve coverage of substance use disorder treatment for older adults and people with disabilities. She previously served as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Health Law Advocates, where she provided direct representation to low-income Massachusetts residents who were denied mental health care. Deborah received her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. from Vassar College.
The Legal Action Center (LAC) is a non-profit organization that uses legal and policy strategies to fight discrimination, build health equity, and restore opportunity for people with arrest and conviction records, substance use disorders, and HIV/AIDS. Since its founding in 1973, LAC has employed a multi-faceted approach to achieving its mission, including direct legal services, impact litigation, policy advocacy, coalition-building, and education and training. LAC works to end punitive and discriminatory responses to stigmatized health conditions and to ensure equitable access to affordable and evidence-based health care. LAC envisions a society that upholds the civil rights and privacy protections of all individuals, regardless of their medical condition or history of involvement with the criminal legal system, and it seeks to dismantle the systemic racism undergirding and perpetuated by mass incarceration.