Inside the Master of Science in Law
Doubling Down on Children’s Health: Erica Leser (MSL ’21)
March 10, 2026
MSL graduate Erica Leser (MSL ’21) has co-authored a timely article exploring how state constitutional law in Oregon might be used to strengthen children’s health protections: “Doubling Down: Dual Constitutional Rights in Oregon to Improve Health for All Children.”
In 2022, Oregon became the first state in the nation to establish a constitutional right to access affordable healthcare. More recently, Oregon has been considering legislation that would establish a state constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment – the so-called “green amendment.” Leser and her co-authors examine how the proposed new environmental protections could work in tandem with the already-established constitutional right to healthcare to improve children’s health in Oregon.
Their core argument is straightforward: Environmental hazards, such as wildfire smoke and water contamination, contribute to chronic illness, raise healthcare costs, and disproportionately affect vulnerable communities. And children are a particularly vulnerable community. “The pairing of two constitutional rights – affordable healthcare and environmental quality – creates a novel and potentially powerful legal and policy framework.” Rather than viewing health and environment as separate policy areas, the paper frames them as mutually reinforcing obligations.
From Global Health Questions to the MSL
The ability to think about legal and constitutional ideas did not emerge for Erica overnight. In fact, it developed in an unexpected way. Growing up, her plan was simple: “graduate from college, join the Peace Corps, and then apply to medical school.” But when her Peace Corps service in South Africa ended early in 2020 because of the pandemic, “the two-year plan was shot.”
Even before returning home, Erica had been thinking about issues in global health that she knew medicine alone couldn’t answer. While working on HIV prevention in South Africa, Erica observed that young women were disproportionately affected because they were being exploited by older men, who offered them money and food for sex. She began asking deeper questions. “We can do as much outreach and job training as we want for these young girls,” she said, “but who’s going to prevent the exploitation? Where are the laws that regulate this type of behavior?”
It was then that she realized studying medicine alone wouldn’t allow her to make the impact she wanted in her future medical career. “I need to understand more about the legal system,” she said. “I decided to go back to school and focus on law before I started med school.”
When she discovered Northwestern’s Master of Science in Law (MSL) program, the decision felt immediate. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s it. I’m going to apply to that.’” Soon after, she moved to Chicago and began the program.
Learning to See Medicine Through Law
From the start of the program, Leser viewed the MSL as good preparation for practicing medicine.
“I was really already thinking that this was going to color the kind of doctor I wanted to be,” she said. “I was choosing classes in the MSL with that goal — how is this going to be relevant to the kind of medicine I want to practice, to the kind of work in the public health and health law space that I want to do as a physician?”
Today, Erica is an MD/MPH student at Oregon Health & Science University, focused on health disparities and is planning a career in women’s health, serving under-resourced communities. Her recent paper examining constitutional rights related to children’s environmental health demonstrates how her legal training continues to shape her work.
“If I hadn’t gone through the MSL program, I would have thought that these two constitutional rights and their impact on children’s health exist as separate facts,” she said. “But because I did the MSL, I understand how the tiered system works — who is responsible for legislating what and regulating what.”
Erica still reflects on the questions she wrestled with during her Peace Corps service. But her legal training has given her a framework that allows her to approach her role as a physician with a different lens, one that has focused her thinking on factors that shape patients’ health long before they enter the exam room. COVID might have disrupted Erica’s two-year Peace Corps plan, but it is the combination of her Peace Corps experience, the MSL, and her ongoing medical and public health training that has shaped her professional identity.
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