The Levitt Justice Lab F2026 The Reality of Care

The Levitt Center invites students to apply to this Fall 26 Justice Lab The Reality of Care: Trade-offs and Tensions in the US Health System. The Lab is a semester-long opportunity where students take a set of three to four parallel courses that combine mutually reinforcing academic and experiential learning experiences. All the instructors in the Lab work together to coordinate syllabi and assignments and to provide students in the Lab with an integrated interdisciplinary understanding of the topic.

For this Justice Lab Professors Matt Grace Herm Lehman and Jeremy Rutter (CEO of Community Wellness Partners) will teach three connected courses in which students willexplore the tensions trade-offs and injustices in the current US healthcare system building the knowledge and perspective to imagine what systemic reform might look like. For more information please see the course descriptions below.

Experiential learning for this Justice Lab will include Friday rotations (embedded opportunities to observe and ask questions at multiple sites) as well as field trips to meet with local officials and to Albany to learn how the process of policy change really works. For rotations students will visit multiple community partner sites to observe and examine the tensions among different organizations roles and people working in healthcare delivery locally.

There are no prerequisites for these courses. The Lab schedule is akin to an ordinary semesters schedule. This means that student-athletes will be able to get to practice and students can work out schedules for on-campus jobs.

You can find a description of this Justice Labs courses below. If you have questions about the Lab please email us at Please note that the Justice Lab will require several field trips and regular trips into the local community. You can find the course schedule here.

BIO-214: Health Care Systems W 1:00-4:00

Health Care Systems is a multidisciplinary course that examines various health care entities with a global to local perspective. Health care systems in the US include public health (population-based services) medical care (individual patients) and nongovernmental systems. We will examine the development and organization of these health and medical systems within the US strengths and challenges related to cost quality and access to these systems and how these systems interact to serve our collective health care needs with a specific focus on Utica NY. Herm Lehman

SOC-325: Medicine in America TR 10:30-11:45

We take for granted medicine as we know it today yet at the turn of the 20th century medical practice could have taken any number of directions. Why did allopathic medicine win out over its competitors to consolidate professional and cultural authority over health How has the patient-provider relationship evolved from an asymmetric model to one characterized by patient consumerism How do trainees learn medicines hidden curriculum Looking forward how will providers fare against challenges to autonomy posed by insurance companies for-profit hospitals politicians and AI To answer these and related questions this course draws on empirical studies historical accounts and media to examine how the profession of medicine has been constructed contested and transformed over time. Matt Grace

COLEG-274/PPOL-274 M 6:30-9:30

This course will combine an embedded rotational experience in local community organizations and field trips with an opportunity to reflect and make connections between these experiences and your academic coursework. By examining the ground-level friction between public health laws and actual delivery students will explore how regulations such as minimum staffing and BSN in Ten create varying impacts for different stakeholders. Through site rotations and field trips we will analyze the trade-offs and unintended consequences of budgetary and legislative decisions and deepen our understanding of the American healthcare machinery.Jeremy Rutter(CEO of Community Wellness Partners)

**Important Note** For international students in F-1 status please note that participation in this program involves off-campus experiential learning. Eligible F-1 students may be required to obtain Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorization prior to participation. CPT authorization is issued by the Office of International Student Services and is contingent upon enrollment in the course receipt of required documentation and timely approval. Students are responsible for meeting all CPT eligibility requirements.

Enrollment in the program is limited. Applications to the Justice Lab are open to all students.