Institute for Healthcare Access
The Institute for Healthcare Access at Texas A&M Health brings together professionals in health and law to frame and advance solutions to the most significant problems that hinder access to timely, effective, affordable health care for individuals and communities.
Together, we are:
Leading collaborative health policy research
Advancing interdisciplinary education
Providing place-based clinical and community service
Convening and communicating with other thought leaders
Most of the challenges to health care access are neither new nor unsolvable.
Rather, the conversations around them—among policymakers, stakeholder groups and the broader public—have become stuck.
We aim to reframe and reposition questions with the goal of restarting and reinvigorating those conversations, increasing the probability of meaningful progress.
Our approach involves
Place-based clinical and community service
- Align and integrate our service, research and educational initiatives with the Texas A&M Health clinical enterprise
- Assist with developing and enhancing clinical partnerships between Texas A&M’s health professional schools and hospitals, clinics and health systems
- Provide consultation for establishing and expanding medical-legal partnerships, which have been shown to significantly impact access to care.
Collaborative research
- Expand and support Texas A&M’s research prominence in health policy, health services, health informatics and other relevant areas
- Create and curate novel data sets connecting medical, social and legal services targeted on identifying and testing strategies for access improvement
Interdisciplinary and interprofessional education
- Develop and implement a curricular platform for interdisciplinary and interprofessional education for Texas A&M schools with health care policy in their educational programming
- Promote and support cross-listed course offerings taught jointly by our core faculty and faculty fellows
- Develop and partner certificate programs and continuing education activities related to health care access
Convening and communicating
- Engage with individuals and communities to uncover health care access challenges and solutions
- Collaborate with local health care professionals and community leaders to clarify and document potential best practices
- Connect community-based work on access with the work of researchers
- Convey ideas and information to the public
- Sponsor conferences and offer training and workshops for Texas A&M collaborators, clinical affiliates and community partners
Current projects
A Right to Be Counted: Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance Capabilities for Vulnerable Gulf Communities
An interdisciplinary research project that intends to improve the National Syndromic Surveillance Program to better support and empower vulnerable communities along the Gulf of Mexico. Learn more.
Medical-legal partnership project for incarcerated individuals at Federal Prison Camp
A partnership that will connect medical and legal expertise to identify adults in custody who require long-term access to post-release critical needs like housing, food security, and more. Learn more.
Our Team
William Sage, MD, JD
Faculty Director
A national authority on health law and policy, Dr. Sage is a tenured professor in Texas A&M’s medical and law schools, a professor by courtesy in the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, an associate vice president in Texas A&M Health and a Permanent Fellow of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study.
Read Dr. Sage's full bio »
Keegan Warren, JD, LLM
Executive Director
Warren brings lived experience and a civil justice lens to bear on health and wellness, specializing in non-medical cost drivers and health equity. She is a national expert on integrating medical and social services through medical-legal partnerships, a care delivery model that leverages legal expertise to advance individual and population health.
Read Warren's full bio »
Susan Rudd Bailey, MD
A past president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Bailey has paved the way for many Aggie physicians, particularly women. She is an allergist/immunologist and currently serves as special assistant to the dean of the Texas A&M School of Medicine and adjunct professor of medical humanities.
Read Dr. Bailey's full bio »
Bryn S. Esplin, JD, HEC-C, CPPS
Director of Education
Esplin’s scholarly and research interests are centered around clinical ethics, patient safety and health law, and her pedagogy emphasizes the social, legal and ethical aspects of medical decision-making, ensuring trainees are exposed to and embrace all stakeholder perspectives to maximize patient safety, health outcomes and access.
Read Esplin’s full bio »