Office of the


General Counsel The CDC Branch in Atlanta of the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) for the Department of Health & Human Services reflects the most traditional legal practice setting for law school graduates at CDC.


“I provide in-house legal advice and counsel to CDC management and staff on a wide range of public health, environmental, administrative, operations, and litigation matters,” said Mark Kashdan, JD ’99, a Senior Attorney with the OGC.


Much of Kashdan’s recent work has been litigation- related, and he often works closely with attorneys in the U.S. Department of Justice on environmental, tort, and criminal litigation matters. He has worked on several high-profile cases, including the Deepwater Horizon multi-district litigation filed over the Gulf Oil spill, the Omnibus Autism Proceeding in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (involving thousands of claims alleging vaccine- related autism), the World Trade Center litigation over personal injury claims by workers responding to the 9/11 disaster, and civil enforcement and criminal litigation related to the Libby Asbestos site in Montana – possibly the worst Superfund toxic waste site in terms of illness and death of workers and residents around the site.


Sudevi Navalkar Ghosh, JD ’98, is another Senior Attorney in the OGC. “I provide legal counsel to various programs within CDC,” she said. “I like that there is a lot of diversity in our work and a need to understand the underlying programmatic work of our clients.” Ghosh’s clients include the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities; the Office of the Associate Director for Science; the Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Science; and the Center for Global Health’s Global AIDS Program. Recently Ghosh has also been involved with healthcare reform implementation.


Promoting the Public’s Health Continued from page 1


“Many law students believe that unless they are going to court or giving legal advice in a traditional law firm setting, they won’t be using the lawyering skills they’ve spent years learning at law school,” observed Charity Scott, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law, Health & Society at the law school. “What these graduates illustrate is how law school can prepare you for work in many different kinds of settings, including national and global policy work, program development, and research and training across a complex range of social and health-related issues, as well as for the more traditional practice of law.”


Sudevi Navalkar Ghosh, JD ’98, MPH Senior Attorney, HHS Office of the General Counsel, CDC Branch


“I very much appreciate the level of dedication of the people who work in the programs at CDC and the level of knowledge and expertise that they bring. It requires us to be on our toes!”


3


Mark Kashdan, JD ’99, MPH


Senior Attorney, HHS Office of the General Counsel, CDC Branch


“I enjoy contributing to CDC’s mission, assisting employees with matters that are largely foreign to them, since CDC is largely not a regulatory or enforcement agency, and my significant interactions with the Department of Justice on high visibility matters.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16