Jennifer Christianson: HIV Case-Worker Joins the Battle Against Discrimination
Jennifer Christianson, a member of the Class of 2002, was awarded the Soia Mentschikoff scholarship for her academic achievement, demonstrated leadership skills and community involvement prior to enrolling at UM. Christianson states that she was honored and incredibly proud to receive such a prestigious award from the Law School.
Christianson is a 1996 graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, having earned her Bachelor's degree in History. In August 1997, she began a two-year involvement with Chase Brexton Health Services Inc. working as a case manager at a non-profit community based health center in Baltimore, Maryland. Having up to 100 cases assigned to her at any given time, Christianson counseled HIV patients on available insurance benefits, comprehensive medical services, housing, entitlements and addiction treatment, coordinating these services for poor and even indigent individuals.
In order to remain for a second year with Chase Brexton, Christianson wrote a grant that funded her position as an outreach worker through a Baltimore agency that dispenses federal grant money. She had a somewhat reduced caseload of 75 patients, which she co-managed with a case manager. Christianson's new duties included locating patients who could potentially be transient, homeless or staying in an outreach shelter somewhere in the city, or another community in the area. The 2L also helped develop a prison outreach program, which is coordinated through the social work staff at Baltimore City Prison. The program is needed to insure that HIV-positive inmates, released with only several days to two weeks of medication, have their insurance processed and in place before being discharged. Otherwise, these patients would run the serious risk of running out of medication and developing drug-resistant strains of the virus that could potentially be untreatable.
Christianson's work experience fueled her concern with legislation and policies dealing with discrimination, specifically housing discrimination against African-Americans, HIV patients, gays, trans-gender individuals and even children. Members of some of these groups enjoy absolutely no federal protection under the law at this time. Christianson is especially concerned with estate planning for AIDS victims, who can die relatively young without initiating a partnership agreement with their partner or spouse. Child custody issues also arise amongst AIDS victims; with a tendency to live in denial of the illness, terminally ill patients may not have taken the proper legal steps to secure child custody rights.
Christianson, a member of the University of Miami Law Review, was recently elected editor-in-chief for 2001-2002. Additionally, she presented a paper at the Evidence Symposium held in March, is a Justice on the Student Bar Association Supreme Court, and is a Dean's Fellow for Contracts. Christianson assisted in coordinating the January 26, 2001 Conference on the Role of a Free Press and Freedom of Expression in the Development and Consolidation of Democracies in Latin America with Professor Irwin Stotzky, was a research assistant to Professor David Abraham, conducted independent research for Professor Michael Graham, and intends to do research for Professor Martha Mahoney in the near future. In the summer of 2000, she interned with the Honorable William Turnoff, US Magistrate Judge, and took an Evidence course at the Law School, a prerequisite to take Litigation Skills in her 2nd year.
Christianson believes that she "has opportunities here at UM Law that I wouldn't have had elsewhere," with the broad range of courses and areas of expertise among the faculty in mind. "Professors here are very accessible to students and interested in giving students opportunities."
From the beginning, Christianson wanted to pursue a judicial clerkship after graduation, and she will fulfill that wish as a law clerk with Judge Stanley Marcus of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Christianson says that she intends to focus on appellate work and litigation in her legal career. She is grateful to Liz Stack in the Career Planning Center for helping her secure her clerkship position.
