Joel Teitelbaum, JD, LLM, is professor of public health and law, director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program, and Co-Director of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. For 11 years served as vice-chair for academic affairs for the Department of Health Policy and Management. Professor Teitelbaum has taught law, graduate, or undergraduate courses on healthcare law, healthcare civil rights, public health law, minority health policy, and long-term care law and policy. He was the first member of the School of Public Health faculty to receive the University-wide Bender Teaching Award, he has received the School's Excellence in Teaching Award, and he is a member of the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers and the School's Academy of Master Teachers. He has authored or co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed articles and reports in addition to many book chapters, policy briefs, and blogs on law and social drivers of health, health equity, civil rights issues in health care, health reform and its implementation, medical-legal partnership, and insurance law and policy, and he has delivered more than 100 invited lectures/presentations at leading universities and national conferences. In addition to Essentials of Health Justice, he is co-author of Essentials of Health Policy and Law (Fifth Edition). In 2000, Professor Teitelbaum was corecipient of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, which he used to explore the creation of a new framework for applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the modern healthcare system.

Among other organizations, Professor Teitelbaum is a member of Delta Omega, the national honor society recognizing excellence in the field of public health, and the ASPH/Pfizer Public Health Academy of Distinguished Teachers. In 2016, during President Obama's second term, Professor Teitelbaum became the first lawyer named to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives (a.k.a. "Healthy People"), the national agenda aimed at improving the health of all Americans over a 10-year span. He serves as a member of the board of advisors of PREPARE, a national advanced care planning organization, and on multiple committees of the American Bar Association: as a liaison to the Task Force on Eviction, Housing Stability, and Equity, as an advisor to the Coordinating Committee on Veterans Benefits and Services, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Public Health Legal Services Research Project in the Center for Human Rights.