Annual Shine Lecture: The Stop Shackling Project: Making an Impact for Patients’ Rights

Neil Singh Bedi is a medical student, advocate, and research scientist based in Boston. His work lies at the intersection of public health and clinical care – with a vision to make health systems more sustainable, effective, and equitable. He is currently a fourth-year medical student at the Boston University School of Medicine. He was a 2025 Zuckerman Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, and earned his Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Neil Singh was the recipient of the 2025 United States Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health award and the APHA/AMSA Paul Ambrose Outstanding Student Award. He has also been inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honor Society and the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

Sondra Crosby, MD is a medical doctor and Professor of Medicine at Boston University, specializing in internal medicine. She is also a faculty member of the Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights department at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Dr. Crosby is notable for being one of the first doctors allowed to travel to Guantanamo to independently examine Guantanamo captives. She is also notable for serving as the director of medical care at the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights. She examined over 300 torture victims at the Center.

Dr. Crosby is one of the authors of Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US, published by Physicians for Human Rights. According to Physicians for Human Rights, Dr. Crosby has “written over 200 affidavits documenting medical and psychological sequelae of torture.”

Nancy Gaden, DNP, RN, FAAN, is a distinguished leader in nursing, serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at Boston Medical Center (BMC) since 2014. She played a key role in the clinical planning and execution of merging two campuses and led BMC to its first Magnet® designation in December 2021.

With prior CNO roles at Hallmark Health System and St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Nancy’s leadership has been recognized with numerous awards, including the ANA Massachusetts President’s Award in 2018 and the 2019 Excellence in Leadership Award from the New England Organization of Nurse Leaders. In 2020, she was honored with a Daisy Lifetime Achievement Award and a recognition from The Commonwealth Institute for advancing healthcare.

Nancy holds a BS in Nursing from the University of Rochester, an MS from Boston College, and a Doctorate in Nursing Practice from Regis College. A Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, she also served as past President of the New England Organization of Nurse Leaders.

Professor McCuskey’s research focuses on regulatory reforms for health equity and courts’ roles in securing those reforms. She has nationally-recognized expertise in state-level health reforms and the role of employer-sponsored insurance in universal access plans, especially ERISA preemptions issues. She advises state legislative task forces on preemption issues in the design of health reforms. Her scholarship appears in legal academic journals including Columbia Law Review, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, The University of California Davis Law Review, The Ohio State Law Journal, Temple Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, and Nebraska Law Review, in addition to the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, the Journal of Legal Medicine, and the N.Y.U. Review of Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation. Her work on ERISA preemption and state health reform was featured on Health Affairs Forefront and by The Commonwealth Fund and she has covered FDA preemption for SCOTUSBlog. Professor McCuskey was a 2023 Brocher Foundation Scholar-in-Residence in Switzerland. The American Society for Law, Medicine, & Ethics selected Professor McCuskey as a 2016 Health Law Scholar and she serves as an adjunct of Saint Louis University’s Center for Health Law Studies.

Professor McCuskey also brings both academic and practice experience to the classroom, where she teaches Public Health Law, Health Law & Policy, Health Insurance & the ACA, Health Care Antitrust, and Food & Drug Law. She previously served as Professor of Law at UMass, and directed the University of Toledo College of Law’s health law program and inter-professional joint degree programs combining law with medicine and public health. Before her academic career, Professor McCuskey practiced law with Drinker, Biddle, & Reath LLP, specializing in antitrust and appellate litigation for health care clients. In addition, she has served as a board member and advocate with Philadelphia Legal Assistance, a litigation assistant for Hale and Dorr LLP’s representation of Boston Scientific, an intern for then-Chief Judge David Faber on the U.S. District Court for the S.D.W.V., and a member of Advisory Committee to the U.S. District Court for the N.D.O.H.