[1] In 1987, Matthew was the first black student to be accepted to the Virginia Law Review in the history of the publication, based on having authored an exceptional article about euthanasia.

[1][2] The deaths of her parents at relatively young ages—her father at 49 and her mother at 61—eventually informed Matthew's research into the effects of unequal access to the social determinants of health.

[1][3] Additionally, she was a member of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities on the Anschutz Medical Campus and held a joint appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health.

[3][8] In 2015, Matthew held an eight-month appointment as "senior adviser to the director of the Office of Civil Rights for the Environmental Protection Agency",[1] and was also a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow from 2015 to 2016,[3] working in that capacity with Senator Debbie Stabenow.

[10] Also in 2018, Matthew was the lead investigator on a $25,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation to develop workshops to help UVA undergraduates "connect with and help Charlottesville residents to address longstanding inequalities", in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in that city.

[11] Matthew noted that the institution "had to grapple with the fact that graduates of the University of Virginia are leaders of the alt-right movement", due to the involvement of UVA alumni Richard B. Spencer and Jason Kessler.

[15] As dean, Matthew articulated a three-pronged agenda focused on enhancing the school's reputation, increasing funding for professorships and scholarships, and strengthening community connections within GW Law.

In March 2022, Matthew organized a letter of support by black law school deans for the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States.

[21][22] In 2024, the American Council on Education named Matthew as one of its "26 emerging college and university leaders for the 2024-25 class of the ACE Fellows Program".

[1][8] Just Medicine was reviewed for the Law and Politics Book Review as "a descriptive and explanatory account that intersects neuroscience, social science and the law", which "extends the discourse beyond access and affordability to include a salient but frequently overlooked factor in the poor health outcomes of minority patients: unconscious racism, also known as implicit bias".