Ruqaiijah Yearby, JD, MPH

Co-Director

Ruqaiijah Yearby, JD, MPH, serves as a Co-Investigator on the RESPIRAR Project. She is the Judge Clifford Scott Green Chair in Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law and a member of the Center for Public Health Law Research.

Ruqaiijah is an interdisciplinary law and public health scholar with expertise in the social determinants of health, civil rights laws, and structural racism. She has developed models to address structural racism and racial health disparities, including the revised social determinants of health framework©.

Combining legal, conceptual, and epidemiological approaches, her research concerning racial and ethnic health disparities explores the ways in which structural inequities in employment and the health care delivery systems prevent minorities, women, and the economically disadvantaged from attaining equal access to quality health care, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality for these groups.