Emily Parento, JD, LLM

Emily Parento is an independent health law and policy scholar and consultant. Her primary scholarly focus is the intersection of domestic health law and policy with the human rights framework for the right to health and health equity. Parento has written on both national and global health law and policy, examining issues such as the impact of the Affordable Care Act on health disparities; legal strategies to strengthen health equity; and global trends in obesity-related regulation.

Parento has been a visiting lecturer at UC Davis School of Law. She has held tenure-track positions at multiple law schools, including assistant professor of law at the University of Louisville and associate professor of law and the Gordon D. Schaber Health Law Scholar at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. Prior to McGeorge, she was executive director of the Office of Health Policy for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, advising the administration of Governor Steven L. Beshear during implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Before her government service, Parento held a fellowship at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. Earlier in her career, she was a federal judicial clerk and practiced litigation at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and California.

Parento holds juris doctor and master of law degrees from Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor's degree in busines administration from the University of Notre Dame. She is admitted to the state bars of California, New York, and Kentucky.