Center Director's Message
January 2024 brings exciting news for the Center and our collaborators, marking the beginning of a clinical ethics consultation program. A formal program offering consultations with a dedicated ethicist to clinicians, patients, and family members has been a Center goal for many years, and was made possible through a groundbreaking partnership with the Associate Vice President for Health Sciences Education, U of U Health (University Hospital), Intermountain Healthcare (Canyons Region and Primary Children’s Hospital), the Department of Pediatrics, and the College of Humanities (Dept. of Philosophy) at the U.
Eleanor Gilmore-Szott arrives this month as the director of the program. She is returning to the U, where she completed her PhD in the Dept. of Philosophy, by way of a Clinical Ethics Fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Dr. Gilmore-Szott shared some thoughts on why this new program is such an important step.
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FACULTY in the NEWS
Peggy Battin's new book, Sex and the Planet: What Opt-In Reproduction Could Do for the Globe, was published by MIT Press in May 2024.
What if human reproduction were always elective? A prominent bioethicist speculates about the possibilities—and the likely consequences.
A new book by Leslie P. Francis and John G. Francis, 'States of Health: The Ethics and Consequences of Policy Variation in a Federal System,' was published by Oxford University Press in May 2024.
“This book engages with the ethics and consequences of policy variation in a federal system. The book discusses the extraordinary range of policies about health and health care in the US, and the truly shocking differences in health outcomes that are associated with these policy differences. We argue that there are advantages to federalism, including possibilities for experimentation and for avoiding the worst case of national bans on ethically controversial care, but that these advantages will only be realized if people can readily move outside of their home states and if national minimums are achieved.”
Gretchen Case's guest post on "Good Notes," a blog that features expert perspectives from U of U leaders and collaborators, discusses the intersection of the arts, humanities, and healthcare and the work we do at the Center.
Brent Kious appears in an episode of "A State of Mind: Confronting Our Mental Health Crisis in Wyoming." A series created by PBS Wyoming to investigate answers to Wyoming's mental health crisis, this documentary series follows patient journeys through a combination of expert interviews and observations from regular people.
Madison Kilbride's research article, titled “Test-Takers’ Perspectives on Consumer Genetic Testing for Hereditary Cancer Risk,” was published in Frontiers in Genetics in July 2024.
Susan Sample’s recently published poems include: "I Dream of a Needle," "Articulate, Please," and "When the Screen Retracts." They will appear later this year in Ars Medica, Canada's first medical humanities journal. Each presents a different perspective—an educator, writer, and daughter—on end-of-life issues.
Leslie Francis’ post on “Bill of Health,” a blog that examines the intersection of health, law, biotechnology, and bioethics highlights Louisiana's new law classifying misoprostol and mifepristone as illegal without a prescription for non-abortion uses, a move that continues to fuel legal debates despite the Supreme Court's recent rejection of a challenge to the FDA's approval of these drugs.
Leslie and John Francis' article, titled "How, and When, Federalism Is Good for Public Health," was published in Harvard Public Health in September 2024.
Susan Sample's lyrical essay, titled "Afterlife," was published in Literature and Medicine in September 2024.