Manel Kappagoda is the deputy director of the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity, a project of Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP). She oversees a team of staff attorneys and policy analysts providing support to communities nationwide on a range of policy strategies to promote healthy eating and active living.
Prior to joining PHLP, she worked at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), where she provided legal services to low-income clients living with HIV/AIDS in the areas of fair housing, access to health insurance, disability benefits and estate planning. She also founded AIDS Lanka, a multidisciplinary project that effectively advocated for increased access to HIV medications in Sri Lanka, and she conducted program planning for EBCLC’s successful medical-legal partnership with Children’s Hospital Oakland. She also has worked with the University of California Office of the President and the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
She graduated from the University of California-Davis, and received a law degree from the UC Hastings College of the Law and a master’s in public health from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
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