We face the imminent closure of as many as nine hospitals in working-class communities across Eastern Massachusetts from the New Hampshire border to Fall River.

How did this happen? What must we do to save access? How can we do health care differently?

EVENT PANELISTS:

Katie Murphy: Katie Murphy,President of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, represents 25,000 members working in 85 health care facilities. Before being elected President in 2020, she had been a strong advocate even longer than that. Katie has served on the board of Mass-Care and also held elective office in Framingham. Katie served on the front lines of the pandemic at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and in the Medical ICU today. She graduated with an Associate of Science in Nursing from Vermont College in 1975, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Boston University in 1982, and a Master of Science in Nursing from Framingham State in 2012.

Alan Sager: Professor Alan Sager of the Boston University School of Public Health has
focused on the causes and effects of urban hospital closings, finding a strong
and persistent link between the race of the people living near a hospital and the
probability of its closing. He has published extensively with the BUSPH Health
Reform Program and its predecessor, the Access and Affordability Monitoring
Program, these studies written in conjunction with his colleague Debbie Socolar
through June of 2012. He was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Center
for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) Oversight Council to serve as its
healthcare economist. Alan earned a BA at Brandeis University,MED at the
University of Miami and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sandy Eaton: Sandy Eaton, RN, worked for nearly fifty years at the bedside, organizing with
Local 1199 and then the Massachusetts Nurses Association to build a
countervailing force to the growing corporatization of health care. Having been
on MNA’s varied elected leadership bodies, Sandy chaired National Nurses
United’s Legislative Council. He is now active with Mass-Care, the Labor
Campaign for Single Payer and the Fund Health Care Not Warfare working group
of Massachusetts Peace Action. He worked for thirty-three years at Quincy
Medical Center, shuttered by Steward Health Care in 2014, and joined the
community’s unsuccessful campaign to save that 124-year-old hospital. In
retirement, he still works for a just healthcare system embedded in a just
society.