Kevin Outterson

Professor of Law Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, School of Law

Professor Outterson teaches health law and corporate law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program, currently ranked #2 in the country by US News. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; faculty co-advisor to the American Journal of Law & Medicine; past chair of the Section on Law, Medicine & Health Care of the AALS; and a member of the Board of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Before teaching, Professor Outterson was a partner at two major U.S. law firms.

His research work focuses on the organization and finance of the health sector. Areas of specialization include global pharmaceutical markets, particularly antibiotics and other antimicrobials that can degrade in usefulness over time through resistance. He leads an interdisciplinary project on the legal ecology of antimicrobial resistance, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program on public health law. He is a faculty affiliate at the Harvard Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics and an appointed member of the Antimicrobial Resistance Working Group at the CDC.

Another significant body of work critiques access and equity issues created by global patent and drug regulation laws. Key texts in this debate include the WTO TRIPS Agreement and related trade agreements.

Professor Outterson publishes in both legal journals such as Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics; Cardozo Law Review; University of Pittsburgh Law Review; Kansas Law Review and the American Journal of Law & Medicine as well as peer-reviewed medical and health policy journals such as New England Journal of Medicine; Health Affairs; Lancet Infectious Diseases; Environmental Philosophy; Medical Journal of Australia; Journal of Generic Medicines; Clinical Infectious Diseases; Journal of Law, and Medicine & Ethics. He blogs on health policy issues at www.theincidentaleconomist.com, which is one of the leading health economics blogs in the US.

On behalf of The New England Journal of Medicine and other clients, Outterson filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting Vermont’s prescription privacy law. His work was cited by Justice Breyer in Sorrell v. IMS Health. A team led by Professors Outterson and Moncrieff at Boston University filed four amicus briefs supporting the Affordable Care Act, which was heard by the Court in the spring of 2012.

Outterson was recently appointed a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, Chatham House where he will reside in Spring 2014, leading a working group at Chatham House on new business models to prevent antimicrobial resistance.