Sofia Gruskin

Professor Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and holds appointments as Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine and as Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law. In addition, she is an affiliate faculty member with the department of American Studies and Ethnicity and the Spatial Sciences Institute—both at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She is highly engaged in university service including as a member of the USC Academic Senate Executive Board, Joint Academic Senate and Provost Task Force on Interdisciplinary Communities, co-chair of the USC Senate Sustainability Committee, and as the primary convener of the USC Law & Global Health Collaboration. Prior to coming to USC, Gruskin was with Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health for many years as director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights, associate professor in the department of Global Health and Population and co-director of the Interdepartmental Program on Women, Gender and Health. After coming to USC, she served as an adjunct professor at Harvard until 2016.

Gruskin is recognized as a pioneer in global health and human rights with work ranging from global policy to the grassroots level, and is particularly recognized for her efforts to bring attention to the effects of law and legal frameworks on health outcomes. Her work has been instrumental in developing the conceptual, methodological and empirical links between global health and human rights, with a focus on HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, child and adolescent health, gender-based violence, non-communicable disease and health systems.  Current research partners include the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and local organizations and universities in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam. Gruskin sits on numerous boards and committees including the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board. She is also the Co-Coordinator of the Rights-Oriented Research and Education Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health (The RORE Network), an international network of researchers and advocates from the Global South and the Global North.

Most recently, Professor Gruskin was on the Board of Directors for the Guttmacher Institute, the Technical Advisory Group of the UN Global Commission on HIV and the Law, and the UNAIDS Global Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights. She is the author or editor of 15 books, training manuals and edited journal volumes, and more than 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. Professor Gruskin is an associate editor for Global Public Health, on the editorial advisory board for Revue Tiers Monde, a trustee of Reproductive Health Matters, and was an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and editor in chief for Health and Human Rights both for over a decade.