"Power To Heal: Medicare And The Civil Rights Revolution" is an hour-long documentary chronicling the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Watch the trailer here.

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Robsham Theater

12:00-4:00 p.m.

RSVP here

Sponsored by the following BC groups:

• William F. Connell School of Nursing
• Racism-based Violence Injury & Prevention Lab at the School of Social Work
• The Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics at the Carroll School of Management

Moderator: 

Leah Gordon, D.N.P., RN, CNP, FNP-C, is the associate dean for Inclusive Excellence, Diversity, and Belonging, and an associate professor of practice.

She earned her associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in nursing from Massachusetts Bay Community College and Regis College, specializing in culturally competent nursing education.

Dr. Gordon's clinical experience includes roles as a nurse and nurse practitioner in oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She currently works one day a week as a nurse practitioner in radiation oncology at MGH.

In academia, she has served as faculty at various Boston-area nursing schools. She also held leadership positions, including assistant director of Multicultural Programming at MGH Institute of Health Professions and diversity director for Nursing at MGH.

Panelists: 

Barbara Berney, author of the movie and special guest.

Dr. Barbara Berney, an associate professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health, is a distinguished scholar specializing in public health and environmental justice. She holds a Master's from UCLA and a PhD in Health Policy from Boston University.

Her extensive career includes a wide range of roles: a health worker in Los Angeles, a policy analyst in Washington, D.C., and the director of an occupational health education center. Dr. Berney also evaluated a program on toxic hazards and contributed to green school legislation in Massachusetts. Inspired by firsthand accounts, she produced a documentary on the civil rights movement and healthcare.

Diana Bowser, Sc.D., M.P.H., is Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Integrated Science at the Connell School of Nursing. Dr. Bowser has 20 years of experience in health system analysis related to health economics, health policy, and using econometric methods and costing techniques to evaluate health system changes in Latin America, Africa, and the United States. She has worked at both the global and federal level on several research projects focusing on specific populations such as women and children and migrants and topics related to behavioral health and substance use. 

Tom Byrne is an Associate Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work, where his research focuses on the causes, consequences and policy solutions to homelessness. Dr. Byrne’s work primarily employs quantitative and quasi-experimental methods to explore policy-relevant questions, including how housing market dynamics and interventions shape community-level homelessness rates; the effectiveness of prevention-focused approaches; and the interrelationships between housing insecurity, housing assistance, and health. His research has been published in high-impact journals that span a number of fields, and his work has been featured in local and national media outlets. He holds a BA in economics from Boston College and an MSW and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.