KB

The Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities

KB

The Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities

Welcome!

We are proud to be hosting the Health Humanities Consortium Conference in March 2027!

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MISSION STATEMENT

The Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities produces new teaching, scholarship, and outreach work, bringing insights from the humanities, arts, law, and social sciences into healthcare education and practice. We seek to prepare tomorrow's healers to act with compassion and justice. Together, we can educate health professionals in bioethics, research ethics, and health humanities, and nurture empathy and humanitarian values. 

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Upcoming Events

Wednesday
October 14, 2026

Literature and Healthcare Discussion Group: Personhood

Our October Literature and Healthcare Discussion will feature: , Personhood: The New...

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Center Director's Message

We have been delighted lately to have more people find us at CHEETAH and to keep hearing from all of you who’ve been with us for a while. Even if you think you know us, you might be surprised by how much we’ve got going on at the Center. 


Did you know we are hiring another clinical ethicist as the demand for our clinical ethics consultation program grows? We’ve also been able to send Sasha Trinkaus and Shannon Gadd to trainings that expand expertise at the U in clinical ethics and arts-based healthcare education.


Did you know that we are again co-producing the live storytelling event Healthcare Stories on February 11, 2027, at Kingsbury Hall, with the Resiliency Center and UtahPresents? This year’s theme is “GUTS!” and the call for stories is open now through September 25.


Did you know that on March 10-13, 2027, we are hosting the annual meeting of the Health Humanities Consortium, for the first time in the Mountain West? The call for papers will go out mid-September, and we hope to have many submissions from local folks for this nationally known conference exploring the intersections of the arts and humanities with healthcare and health sciences education. 


Did you know that Mark Matheson will lead his final Literature & Healthcare session in December? Please join us for a special in-person discussion on December 9, 2026, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM in the Sterling Sill Center conference room to celebrate Dr. Matheson’s extraordinary gift of leading us through literature. Please RSVP to ethicshum@hsc.utah.edu by November 18, 2026. 


If you are reading this newsletter for the first time, make sure to take note of our ongoing series: Ethics Explored, where we discuss challenging issues in medical ethics, and the Literature & Healthcare discussion group, which meets each month to discuss a book that reflects on health and medicine. We also host nationally known speakers: Patrick Smith for this year’s Cowan-Mayden Lecture and Tyler Tate for the David Green Memorial Lecture. We collaborate with partners across campus like our sustained work with the Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences (LABS) and to hold special events that wouldn’t be possible without all our friends and supporters (like Kate Bowler in 2025). 


Join us at an event, reach out to our faculty, suggest an idea, sponsor an initiative. Welcome! 

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Gretchen Case
Gretchen Case, PhD, MA Center Director

Check back often so you don't miss out on our collaborative events!

FACULTY in the NEWS

Eleanor Gilmore-Szott Headshot

Eleanor Gilmore-Szott, PhD, HEC-C

We’re excited to feature Clinical Ethics Program Director Eleanor Gilmore-Szott. In Clinical Ethics: When Medical Decisions Have No Clear Answer, she shares how clinical ethics helps patients, families, and care teams navigate difficult medical decisions with clarity and compassion.

Leslie Francis

Leslie Francis, PhD, JD

Leslie Francis received the 2026 Service to the Courts Award for her work on guardianship training.

James Tabery

James Tabery, PhD, MA

See the Salt Lake Tribune article “SLC unveils plaque for lynched Black man after Utah GOP leaders twice voted against it” to read more about Jim Tabery’s work locally. 


He also published “Precision Medicine and the ‘Methodological Genomification’ of Racial Health Disparities” in Philosophy of Science.

Leslie Francis

Leslie Francis, PhD, JD

Leslie Francis will give a talk, “Achieving Disability Justice,” at South Dakota State on Sept. 18.

Madison Kilbride

Madison Kilbride, PhD

Madison Kilbride has recently published two articles: “Consumer Experiences and Perceptions of Genetic Counseling in Provider-Mediated Genetic Testing” in the Journal of Genetic Counseling and “When Results Are Not Enough: A Narrative Case Study of Barriers to Informed Decision Making in Prenatal Testing” in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.

PB

Margaret Battin. PhD, MFA

Peggy Battin stays active in scholarship and public debate, including a panel on “The Paradox of Safeguards in Medical Aid in Dying” at the World Congress of Bioethics in Johannesburg, her upcoming book “Adventure Ethics and Wilderness Medicine” from Springer Nature, the Faith Sommerfield Memorial Lecture at Columbia this September, and her work on “Challenging Unsupported Assumptions in Thinking about How to Save the Great Salt Lake.”