Director: Abigail English, JD
Abigail English is the director of the Center for Adolescent Health & the Law, which she co-founded in 1999. She is a lawyer, researcher, and advocate for the rights of vulnerable young people. She has participated in major litigation affecting the legal rights of children and adolescents, lectured widely to youth serving professionals, and taught courses in public policy, law, and public health. Her research and advocacy have focused on health insurance and public financing of care for adolescents and young adults, consent and confidentiality protections, and sexual and reproductive health care. From 1976-1998, she was an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) in San Francisco, California, where she established NCYL’s Adolescent Health Care Project. She has held adjunct faculty appointments at the UC Berkeley School of Public Policy, the Boalt Hall School of Law, and the Gillings Global School of Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. She was a Gallagher Lecturer for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine in 1987, and she received the Child Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division in 1997 and the Outstanding Achievement Award in Adolescent Medicine from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine in 2000. In 2010-2011, she was the Frieda L. Miller Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where her work focused on sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of adolescents and young adults.