Ruqaiijah Yearby, JD, MPH 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.

She 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 system prevent minorities, women, and the economically disadvantaged from attaining equal access to quality health care, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality for these groups. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Bioethics, American Journal of Public Health, Emory Law Journal, Health Affairs, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Oxford Journal of Law and the Biosciences.

She earned her B.S. in Honors Biology from the University of Michigan, M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as an Assistant Regional Counsel and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.