Ady Barkan is an attorney/activist, co-founder of the Be a Hero PAC, who has long worked for the Center for Popular Democracy. In 2016, shortly after his first child was born, Ady was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a terminal neurodegenerative illness. Since his diagnosis, he has become a fierce advocate for health care rights. In December 2017, Ady was filmed engaging with Senator Jeff Flake (Arizona) --the two were on the same airplane -- about his impending vote that would lead to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The exchange went viral and since then Ady has become a sought-after speaker and interlocutor meeting with presidential candidates, testifying before the US House Committee on Rules, and becoming a leading advocate for healthcare coverage as a human right.
Over his career, Ady has specialized in bringing policy makers face to face with the people whose lives their decisions shape, and generating public attention and political pressure out of those confrontations. Since 2017, Ady’s work has focused on health care, marshaling his own paralysis from A.L.S. to urge Americans to demand more of our government. He received his juris doctorate from Yale Law School and now lives in Santa Barbara, CA, where he works as the founder and Co-Executive Director of Be A Hero. His story is told in the new documentary Not Going Quietly and he is the author of Eyes to the Wind: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance.
Barkan’s recent NYT piece on home health care
Barkan on CNN: “Not Going Quietly”
Professor Jonathan Engel conducts research in the historical evolution of U.S. health and social welfare policy. His books are Doctors and Reformers: Discussion and Debate on Health Policy, 1925-1950 (University of South Carolina Press, 2002); Poor People’s Medicine: Medicaid and U.S. Charity Care Since 1965 (Duke University Press, 2006); The Epidemic: A History of AIDS (Smithsonian Books, 2006); American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States (Gotham Books of Penguin/Putnam, 2008); Unaffordable: American Healthcare from Johnson to Trump (University of Wisconsin, 2017); and Fat Nation: Obesity in America Since 1945 (Rowmn & Littlefield, 2018). He is currently writing a history of science policy in the United States during the Cold War titled Transforming American Science. Professor Engel teaches courses in the healthcare policy track of the MPA, in addition to teaching the research methods sequence. Prior to joining Baruch College in 2008, he was a professor of healthcare policy and management at Seton Hall University for 13 years. He has also taught courses in healthcare finance and policy at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and at the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts. He currently serves as Faculty Development Coordinator for the Marxe School.
*please send any questions to carina.pasquesi@baruch.cuny.edu*
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