The 2023 UConn Health Board of Directors Faculty Recognition Award recipient is Zita Lazzarini, J.D., M.P.H. She is recognized for her advancement of medical education at UConn and dedicated public service to the State of Connecticut.

At UConn School of Medicine Lazzarini oversees courses addressing health systems sciences, including her fields of specialization, law, public health, and bioethics. She serves as an associate professor in the Division of Public Health Law and Bioethics in the Department of Public Health Sciences and director of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine. She has been with UConn Health since 1998.

“Professor Lazzarini has excelled in her educational and community service contributions to UConn Health,” applauds Dr. Bruce T. Liang, dean, UConn School of Medicine and UConn Health Interim CEO. “We are thankful for her longstanding and continued service.”

To reduce health disparities through medical education of the next generation of future doctors, Lazzarini uniquely helped create and directs the medical school’s innovative curriculum for its Certificate of Social Determinants of Health and Disparities. UConn is the first medical school in the nation to require its medical students to complete a curriculum in social determinants of health and disparities to receive their medical degree. The successful program is being emulated by other medical schools.

For Connecticut, Lazzarini’s significant public service has also included participating in Governor Ned Lamont’s COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Group. She was an expert advisor on the Advisory Group’s subcommittee responsible for the critical roll-out of the first COVID-19 vaccines, the initial vaccination phases, and allocations to hospitals. She has also worked with the state’s Department of Public Health on their Crisis Standards of Care Committee.

Lazzarini is also an accomplished author and researcher on health and human rights, public health law, reproductive justice, privacy and confidentiality, surrogate decision-making at the end of life, and HIV prevention among pregnant women and injection drug users.

In July, in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine she published a perspective article entitled, “The End of Roe v. Wade – States’ Power over Health and Well-Being.” In the article she evaluates the immediate and potential future impact of the end of Roe vs. Wade on health and well-being of women and how reproductive autonomy is central to a woman’s full participation in society.

Nationally, she has served as a special consultant for the Georgetown-Johns Hopkins Program on Law and Public Health, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has worked with the World Health Organization on projects involving HIV.

Lazzarini received her juris doctorate and bachelor’s degree from the University of California. She was awarded her Master’s in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health and completed her medical ethics fellowship training at Harvard Medical School.

“I want to thank the Board of Directors for this award.  I feel extremely honored to receive this and very gratified that the Board chose me,” says Lazzarini. “When I first came to UConn in the fall of 1998 I was very impressed by the school’s long-term commitment to developing humanistic physicians, dentists, and public health professionals who serve the people of the State of Connecticut, the nation, and the world.  I have always felt like the Dean and the school have ‘had my back,’ providing support to me as an educator, advocate, and researcher.  I am also lucky to work with the best and most collaborative team of educators possible. I look forward to coming to work every day because each day is both meaningful and enjoyable.”