Ken Gatter- Co-Founder, Executive Director
Ken Gatter, MD, JD, is the Executive Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership and a Professor and Vice-Chair of Anatomic Pathology at OHSU. He first observed the social determinants of health when working as a paralegal in The Bronx DA’s office before attending Boston University Law School. He practiced law for a few years, and then went to medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), completing his residency at Case Western University Hospitals. Since arriving in Portland in 1998 he has worked to combine law and medicine by teaching health law as an adjunct professor at Willamette Law School, publishing on various health law topics and introducing medical students to legal issues in medicine.

Laura Russell- Co-Founder, Director of Operations and Policy
Laura Russell is the Director of Operations and Policy at MLPO and an attorney with the Oregon Health Justice Center where she works at the Richmond Clinic MLP and Doernbecher NICU MLP. She became passionate about health justice while working for a Medicaid managed care company just out of college. That passion led her to graduate school to better understand the intersection of health and poverty. Ms. Russell believes that medical-legal partnerships serve a vital role in combating the effects of poverty on patient and population health. Prior to law school she was a health policy fellow at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT) at the University of Michigan. During law school at Lewis & Clark, she served as a law clerk at both the Chicago Medical Legal Partnership for Children and Northwest Health Law Advocates in Seattle, WA.

Medical-Legal Partnership of Oregon Board Members

Rachel Arnold- Co-Founder, MLPO, Health Share of Oregon

Scott Fields - OCHIN, Oregon Health Sciences University

Ken Gatter - MLPO, Oregon Health Science University

Molly B Herrmann - Northwest Permanente

Erica Idso-Weisz, Rogue Community Health

Monica D. Martinez – CareOregon

Laura Russell - Medical Legal Partnership of Oregon/Oregon Health Justice Center

Alyssa Walker-Keller - Migrant Education Multnomah ESD