Kate Mitchell

Professor Mitchell joined the Health Justice Project in 2017 after more than 16 years practicing and teaching in the areas of poverty law, juvenile justice, and health law and medical-legal partnerships. Professor Mitchell’s practice experience includes representing children and families in poverty in access to health care, public benefits, special education, housing and family law as well as juvenile delinquency and prison condition cases, and other general civil law matters. She has also been involved in local, state, and national policy work in the areas of access to health care, education, and juvenile justice.

Before joining Loyola, Professor Mitchell spent three years as a clinical teaching fellow with the Pediatric Advocacy Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, a medical-legal partnership clinic serving pediatric patients and their families. She previously served as the Legal Director of the Toledo Medical Legal Partnership for Children at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality and Legal Aid of Western Ohio in Toledo, Ohio. Professor Mitchell started her legal career as a staff attorney with Legal Aid Chicago and then as a staff attorney and policy director at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. Following Hurricane Katrina, Professor Mitchell worked as a fellow at The Public Law Center at Tulane University School of Law focusing on economic and housing revitalization efforts in New Orleans.

Professor Mitchell has presented at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of topics including upstream advocacy, medical-legal partnerships, Medicaid and child access to health care, special education, collaborative interdisciplinary advocacy, interprofessional education, health equity, juvenile competency standards, and healthy housing advocacy. Her primary research interests relate to the intersection of poverty, health, and legal advocacy; interdisciplinary approaches to advocacy; upstream lawyering; Medicaid and access to health care; interprofessional education; racism and health equity; and the impact of school disciplinary practices on children with disabilities. Professor Mitchell has been admitted to practice law in Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, and Michigan.