News & Events

Professor McGovern’s appointment reflects the critical importance of research on health and human rights. Professor McGovern’s expertise in global health and human rights systems and in advocating for gender justice, environmental justice, and sexual and reproductive health and rights is of exceptional relevance in these challenging times. Professor McGovern is a celebrated teacher as well as scholar and advocate, and her appointment will benefit students on all LLM and PhD programmes at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.

Terry McGovern, JD, is a Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences, the Director of the Sexual & Reproductive Justice Hub, and the former Senior Associate Dean for Student and Academic Affairs at the City of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH). Prior to joining CUNY SPH, Terry McGovern was the Harriet and Robert H. Heilbrunn Professor and Chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Before joining Columbia in 2002, McGovern served as Senior Program Officer in the Gender, Rights, and Equality Unit of the Ford Foundation, where she oversaw global and domestic programming relating to HIV, gender, LGBT, and human rights.

In 1989, McGovern founded the HIV Law Project, where she served as Executive Director until 1999. While there, she successfully litigated numerous cases against federal, state, and local governments including S.P. v. Sullivan, which forced the Social Security Administration to expand HIV-related disability criteria so that women and low-income individuals can qualify for Medicaid and Social Security benefits, and T.N. v. FDA, which eliminated a 1977 Federal Drug Administration guideline banning women of childbearing potential from early phases of clinical trials.

McGovern’s research focuses on health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and health, gender justice, and environmental justice. Her publications appear in journals including The BMJ, Health and Human Rights, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, PLoS One, and she was lead author of Sexual and reproductive justice as the vehicle to deliver the Nairobi Summit commitments, which seeks to address disparities that impede progress toward global and national sexual and reproductive health and rights commitments. She is a member of The BMJ North America Advisory Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the UNFPA Global Advisory Council.