Institute for Healthcare Access directors selected to speak at industry conference

The Texas A&M Health Institute for Healthcare Access announced today that several of its leaders have been invited to speak at the upcoming 48^th annual Health Law Professors Conference, a premier industry conference sponsored by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics taking place in Boston on June 4-6.

The 2025 annual event is hosted by the Boston University School of Law. It invites health law leaders, experts and professors from across the world for discussions on current topics, key issues and best practices, in addition to providing networking opportunities.

This year, the Institute for Healthcare Access leadership will offer Texas A&M Health expertise throughout the conference, participating in several panel sessions.

Keegan Warren, JD, LLM, the institute’s executive director, and Bryn S. Esplin, JD, HEC-C, CPPS, the institute’s education director, are panelists for “Legal Remedies, Healthy Outcomes: Curricular Innovation at the Intersection of Medicine, Law, & Government Efficiency.” Serving on this panel and representing Texas A&M University are Samuel M. Sanchez, JD, from the School of Law, and the institute’s associate Brian Dixon, MD, from the College of Medicine.

The session will introduce the nation’s first prison-based medical-legal partnership project, which was launched by Texas A&M University School of Law and College of Medicine in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The discussion will explore how the program pairs medical and law students to address factors contributing to recidivism by assisting incarcerated women with pre-release Social Security disability benefit applications.

Panelists will share insights into the project’s evidence-based approach, its impact on the student experience, and its role in evolving interprofessional education, addressing health care burnout, and shaping the future of medical and legal curricula and partnerships.

Warren is a leading specialist in and frequent speaker on medical-legal partnership and its integration of medical and social services into the patient care experience for improved individual and population health. Her work focuses on legal interventions as a means for addressing non-medical drivers of health and reducing health disparities. Because of her successes, she is a trusted advisor to health organizations, helping to identify institutional policies that may be inadvertently worsening disparities, raising costs and contributing to the decline of trust in these institutions.

“We’re excited to participate as panelists in this year’s conference,” Warren said. “More importantly, we’re honored to join other experts in health law and engage in educational and informative discussions that help us prepare the next generation of leaders. We hope our contributions will not only be of value to attendees but also inspire a new wave of innovative advancements within health law. As professors and practitioners, our goal is to truly enhance the education we provide and better prepare the workforce, and we’re eager to share with and learn from our colleagues.”

Esplin is a sought-after national bioethics expert with special interests in clinical ethics, patient safety and the humanities. In addition to her leadership role at the institute, she is an instructional associate professor in the Department of Humanities in Medicine at the Texas A&M University College of Medicine. Her research has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals, including Harvard’s Health and Human Rights Journal, The Psychiatric Times and the American Journal of Bioethics, Neuroscience.

“The strength of our health law programs lies in our ability to bridge theoretical knowledge with essential practical and collaborative skills like health-law education,” Esplin said. “As a lifelong student of bioethics and leader of interprofessional education at the institute, I am particularly keen on exploring how we can not only support students’ career pathways, preparing them for real-world experiences, but also show how an interprofessional approach best serves patients, clients and communities.”

In addition to Warren and Esplin’s participation, the institute’s Faculty Director William Sage, MD, JD, will serve as a panelist for “Structural Issues and Theories in Health Law.”

To learn more about the institute, visit healthcare-access.tamu.edu.