Past Events

The Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Hall Center for Law and Health and the Indiana University School of Medicine proudly present the 2025 McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Award to Dr. Yolanda Becker.

Solid Organ Transplants: When Policies, Patients, and Politicians Collide

Solid organ transplantation has saved countless lives. The narrative that there is an organ donor shortage is difficult to understand in our current era when organ donation has consistently grown in the US at a greater pace than transplantation. The disagreements about organ allocation have raged for years. The reasons are complex and the recent advancements in organ preservation allow a new paradigm to be considered.

This lecture and panel will present how policy change can improve access to transplant and the allocation of solid organs to patients with the greatest need. Speakers will discuss policy changes that have decreased healthcare disparities and how involving politicians in medical care is a threat to the public trust and functioning of the transplant system in the US.

Event Recording

This is an in-person only event and will not be live streamed. This program will be offered for 2.0 hours Traditional Indiana CLE credit (pending approval).

E-mail certificates will be provided certifying attendance for those wishing to apply for CLE credit outside of Indiana.

CEU Certificates are available for Indiana Behavioral Health & Human Services Providers.

MMK Agenda

Friday, February 21, 2025

Awardee/Keynote Speaker

Yolanda T. Becker, M.D., FACS, FAST, CTBS

Dr. Becker has served in many roles throughout her career as a Transplant Surgeon. She is a Past President of the OPTN/UNOS (Organ Procurement and Transplant Network/United Network for Organ Sharing) board of directors. Dr. Becker participated in the writing of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine Consensus study report, “Realizing the Promise of Equity in the Organ Transplantation system”. She served on the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) steering committee as the Co-Chair of a workgroup assessing patient factors contributing to kidney graft loss. Dr. Becker was the Director of Adult and Pediatric Kidney Transplant at the University of Chicago from 2010-2023.

In 2023, Dr. Becker switched from the organ transplant world to the world of organ donation and currently serves as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at LifeGift where she recently celebrated her one-year work anniversary.

Dr Becker earned her medical degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore and completed her general surgery training at Vanderbilt University.  She finished her multiorgan transplant fellowship at the University of Wisconsin and is proud of training many of the current Surgical Directors of Transplant Programs around the country. Dr. Becker is the proud mom of 2 recent college graduates.  In addition to her love for running long distances, she enjoys cheering on her favorite soccer teams, reading, and taking care of her many pets.

Panelists

Panelist: Alexandra Glazier, JD, MPH

Alexandra Glazier is President & CEO of New England Donor Services (NEDS), the nonprofit organ procurement organization (OPO) responsible for coordinating organ donation and transplantation in the region. NEDS has increased organ donation by 80% since 2020 making it one of the top 3 largest OPOs in the U.S. with 350 staff serving over 200 hospitals, 14 transplant centers and a population of 15 million in six states. NEDS has been recognized as a top 100 Female-Led Business by the Boston Globe for the past 7 years.

Alex has held national leadership positions including Chairing the OPTN Ethics Committee and the Policy Oversight Committee, and appointment to the Secretary of HHS, Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation. Alex has served on national Boards including the OPTN, UNOS and currently on Donate Life America.

Alex is an Associate Professor at Brown University where she teaches courses in health law and in public health leadership.

Panelist: Robert Katz, JD

Professor Katz earned a J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as a comments editor on the University of Chicago Law Review and was awarded the prize for best law review comments. He also holds an A.B. magna cum laude in Government from Harvard College, where he was awarded the departmental prize for best thesis in political theory. He served as a clerk to the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer, when he served as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Before joining the IU McKinney faculty in 2001, Professor Katz was a Bigelow Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School and served as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division's Federal Programs Branch.

Professor Katz is writing Antisemitism and the Law (forthcoming Carolina Academic Press). This casebook, the first on the subject, examines how the legal system manifests and propagates antisemitism and how it can be used to combat it. He is a member of the ABA Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a Senior Research Fellow at the ADL Center for Antisemitism Research, the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism and the Law, and President of the IU-Indy Jewish Faculty and Staff Council.

As a civil rights advocate, Professor Katz served as co-counsel in Stafford v. Carter (S.D. Ind.), a class action brought on behalf of Indiana inmates infected with the hepatitis C virus. The Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) settled the case by agreeing to pay more than $80 million to treat infected inmates. Professor Katz was also co-counsel in Lee v. Pence (S.D. Ind.) which successfully challenged Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. In March 2015, he testified in opposition to proposed amendments to the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act before the Indiana General Assembly’s House Judiciary Committee, objecting that it authorized discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. He currently serves on the Government Affairs Committee of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), offering guidance on issues such as hate crimes and reproductive freedom.

Panelist: Lauren D. Nephew, MD, MA, MSCE

Dr. Lauren Nephew is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and the Associate Vice Chair of Health Equity for the Department of Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.  Her NIH-funded research program focuses on understanding how the structural and social determinants of health contribute to disparities in liver disease and developing interventions that improve access to care. 

Dr. Nephew completed Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation Fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania. While at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University for medical school, Dr. Nephew completed a Master’s program in Bioethics.   While at the University of Pennsylvania, she completed a Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology.  She is a champion of social justice, wife, and mother of two.

Host/Moderator: Renée M. Landers, JD

Renée M. Landers joined IU McKinney in fall 2024 as the visiting McKinney Family Chair in Health Law. She is professor of law at Suffolk University Law School and is the faculty director of the school’s Health and Biomedical Law Concentration and the Master of Science in Law Life Sciences program. At Suffolk, she teaches administrative law, constitutional law, health law, and privacy law. Professor Landers was co-winner of Suffolk Law’s Professor Catherine T. Judge Teaching and Service Award in March 2022. As President of the Boston Bar Association in 2003-2004, she was the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve in that position. She has worked in private practice and served as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration.

Host/Moderator: Dr. Rakesh Mehta, MD

Dr. Mehta is an associate professor of clinical medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He graduated from the Penn State University College of Medicine, and then completed his Internal Medicine Residency and Hematology Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His clinical focus has been classical hematology with a particular passion for coagulation medicine. He has had several roles within the education mission during his tenure at IUSM, including being an Associate Program Director for the IM residency and the Associate Dean for Medical Student Affairs. When the school’s curriculum was overhauled, he helped lead the development of a new, more interactive hematology course.  He subsequently served as the Patient Care Competency Director for the medical school. In 2020, he had the good fortune to be selected to be the Vice Chair for Education for the Department of Medicine.  He has been very active at the national level with the American Society of Hematology(ASH).  He served on the ASH Committee on Training, including participating within the Medical Education subcommittee.  He was the chair for the Research Training Award for Fellows study section for the two years, and then was the chair of the ASH Training Awards Subcommittee.  He has been a faculty member of the ASH Medical Educator’s Institute, and currently is on the ASH Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Parking:

Parking is available for a nominal fee at the campus Gateway Garage, located on the corner of Michigan and California Streets (Address is 525 Blackford Street). Parking is also available for a nominal fee at the Natatorium Garage two blocks west of the law school.

Accommodations:

Individuals who need special assistance should call (317) 278-3857 no later than one week prior to the event. Special arrangements can be made to accommodate most needs.