NYLPI Attorney – Nisha Agarwal

Nisha Agarwal is a 2006 graduate of Harvard Law School and recently completed a Skadden Fellowship at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, where she is the Director of the Health Justice Program. Ms. Agarwal’s work at NYLPI (New York Lawyers for Public Interest) focuses on bringing a racial justice and immigrant rights perspective to health care advocacy. She is currently representing a Latino community-based organization in New York City in a legal and legislative campaign to make pharmacies accessible to people who are limited English proficient. She has also been working with a coalition of 40 community- and faith-based organizations in the Bronx to challenge the segregation of patients on the basis of race and insurance type in the outpatient departments of New York hospitals. Nisha is also active in the South Asian Bar Association of New York, where she serves as Vice President for Public Interest, and is the co-founder of the Harvard Law School Summer Theory Institute for public interest law students. Ms. Agarwal earned her BA, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 2000 and received a British Marshall Scholarship for graduate studies at Oxford University.

ASIANCE: Did your parents play a role in you attending law school?

Nisha: Not really. My parents were supportive of whatever I chose to do and, originally, I didn’t have any interest in being a lawyer. I actually wanted to study international development as an academic, but grew frustrated by the lack of real-world impact I felt like I could have in that position and decided to go to law school as a result.

ASIANCE: Can you tell us about your role at NYLPI.

Nisha: At NYLPI, I am the Director of the Health Justice program, where my work focuses on bringing a racial justice & immigrant rights perspective to health care advocacy. I’m currently working on a number of campaigns, including one related to language barriers in pharmacies and another focused on racial and insurance-based segregation in New York City hospitals. One of the great things about my job is that we use a range of strategies, not just litigation, to advance our clients’ goals. For example, I have worked on legislative campaigns at the local and state level, even drafting some of the legislation and amendments that have been proposed. NYLPI has a philosophy of “community lawyering,” which means that all our work combines community education & organizing, and I spend half of any given week in the various neighborhoods of New York City, meeting with clients, strategizing about our campaigns, and educating individuals about their rights.

ASIANCE: How did you get involved with the Bronx Health Reach organization and why is it important to you?

Nisha: When I first started at NYLPI, in September 2006, the health team was already in conversations with Bronx Health REACH about strategies that could be used to eliminate the practice of separating patients seeking outpatient care on the basis of insurance, and the racially disparate impact of such practices. I got involved in the case by doing some of the initial legal research and participating in the early strategy meetings, and I’ve been involved with it ever since.

My work with REACH is important to me for innumerable reasons, not the least of which is that it is energizing and inspiring to work with a grassroots community organization committed to eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care, and willing to put in the long, hard work to dismantle the institutional structures that cause those disparities to exist in the first place. Too often, we hear about all the problems in the health care system, but we rarely hear stories about what people at the grassroots level are doing to solve those problems. The story of REACH and our campaign with them is about how people can come together to fight against injustices in the health care system, and I hope that in the end it is a story of how they can win those battles.

Nisha at NYLPI

ASIANCE: What did your parents tell you about marching with Ghandi? Anything you can share?

Nisha: My parents always supported my social activism, and part of this involved educating me and my brother about the history of activism within our family. When my grandfather marched with Gandhi, he invited his younger brother to come along, and the impact was so significant that my grand uncle became very active in the freedom struggle as well. I think that’s what it is all about: one generation of social activists has to encourage and support the next.

ASIANCE: What did you accomplish for the South Asian Studies Initiative in terms of the South Asian curriculum at Harvard. Did you make any significant accomplishments that you can share?

Nisha: One of the most significant accomplishments of the South Asian Studies Initiative was that it lasted beyond the three years or so that I was involved as the founder. In fact, it became formally incorporated into the larger South Asian Association on campus and was eventually responsible for expanding the range of courses in South Asian history, language etc. For me, it is important to be active in whatever community I happen to be a part of. In college, that was the student community and, through SASI, we sought to bring about improvements for that community.

ASIANCE: Anything that you would like to change or are working on in terms of legislation?

Nisha: I am currently representing a community based organization called Make the Road New York on the issue of language barriers in pharmacy, and we recently introduced local legislation to strengthen the requirements on pharmacies to provide interpretation services and translated medication labels. If we succeed in passing this legislation, it will improve access to medications for hundreds of thousands of individuals across New York City.

ASIANCE: If you weren’t a lawyer you would be………

Nisha: A community organizer. Or maybe an academic who studies and writes about social justice issues.

ASIANCE: What do you do on your time off?

Nisha: One of my favorite things to do is to get a group of friends together, make a big dinner and hang out in my backyard. I also enjoy being outdoors, though that is sometimes a challenge in the city. And I’m trying to practice and improve my photography, which I love doing in my free time or when I’m traveling.

ASIANCE: How do you feel the progress of minorities in America is going? What else would you like to see be done?

Nisha: I am frustrated by all the talk of a “post-racial” America, now that we have an African-American president. We have certainly come a long way as a country, but there is still a long way to go. I’d like to see our schools and communities be less racially segregated. I’d like to see racial and ethnic disparities in health care eliminated.

ASIANCE: What do you think of the current situation with Professor Gates, Obama and Officer Crowley?

Nisha: I did not take any classes with Prof. Gates, unfortunately. My reaction to what happened to him is the same as many people around the country – deeply disappointed and disturbed. I would urge anyone interested in the way that racial (and other forms) of bias impact all people to check out the Implicit Project at Harvard. You can take an online test on the Project’s website to figure out your own biases. By acknowledging them, we can begin to address them, productively.

ASIANCE: Anything else you would like to add?

Nisha: Nope, except I’d encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about what I do and what NYLPI’s Health Justice program does to check out our blog: http://healthjustice.wordpress.org. It gives a good sense of what a health care & civil rights attorney does on a regular basis.