Bioethics in the Margins

by Kirk Johnson and Amelia Barwise

Who we are: We are a collaborative of bioethics scholars interested in creating a more inclusive space to explore topics relevant to bioethics and the medical humanities while advancing equity and social change/restitution. Although we found our shared interests through our membership in the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities Race Affinity Group, we are independent of ASBH and any other organization. The views exp ... 

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Religion & Spirituality
Philosophy

Podcast episodes

  • Season 6

  • Nonprofit Healthcare, Virtue, and Mission with Dr. Mark Kuczewski

    Nonprofit Healthcare, Virtue, and Mission with Dr. Mark Kuczewski

    S06 E02
    54:14

    Amelia and Kirk chat with Dr. Mark Kuczewski, Professor of Medical Ethics at Loyola University, Chicago. In this episode, they discuss his recent article https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/nonprofit-health-care-behaves-badly-case-mission-leaders-ombudsmen in which Dr. Kuczewski elucidates the challenges nonprofit healthcare employees face as workplace culture becomes increasingly corporatized and the importance of counterweights– in the form of ombudsmen, better-designed incentive structures, and virtuous local board members– who can potentially help promote the nonprofit mission for patients. They also discuss Dr. Kuczewski’s publication on organizational ethics and the importance of hiring for mission (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6121839_Is_Organizational_Ethics_the_Remedy_for_Failure_to_Thrive_Toward_an_Understanding_of_Mission_Leadership). Dr. Kuczewski describes the “patchwork” of healthcare available to undocumented immigrants and the need to sever the tie between immigration status and healthcare access and talks about his work with Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine to accept DACA recipients into its program. Dr. Kuczewski is the Father Michael I. English S.J. Professor of Medical Ethics at Loyola University, Chicago, the director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, and a Fellow of the Hastings Center. His current interests include the bioethical issues related to immigration. He served as the project manager of the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine effort to include Dreamers in medical education, wherein Stritch became the first medical school in the nation to welcome applications from Dreamers of DACA status. https://www.luc.edu/stritch/bioethics/aboutus/facultydirectory/profiles/kuczewskimark.shtml

  • Deliberative democracy, social justice and the Black Opticon: a discussion with Dr. Anita Allen

    Deliberative democracy, social justice and the Black Opticon: a discussion with Dr. Anita Allen

    S06 E01
    55:21

    Kirk and Amelia had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Anita L. Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. In this episode, they discuss Dr. Allen’s experiences working on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues  where she engaged in deliberative democracy approaches to explore challenges with advances in biomedicine, technology and synthetic biology. A highlight of her time there  included a report titled “Ethically Impossible”  that documented and acknowledged gross human research subject abuses that occurred in Guatemala from 1946-1948, overseen by the US Public Health Service.  (https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/sites/default/files/Ethically%20Impossible%20(with%20linked%20historical%20documents)%202.7.13.pdf). Other aspects of Dr. Allen’s prolific career that they discuss include her work on the concept of privacy, reproductive justice  and racial justice concerns in what Dr. Allen has termed “The Black Opticon” (https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/dismantling-the-black-opticon).    Dr. Allen is an internationally renowned philosopher with over 120 articles and chapters published at the intersection of bioethics, privacy and data protection law, women’s rights, and diversity in higher education. She is a graduate of Harvard Law, currently serving on the Board of the National Constitution Center, the Future of Privacy Forum and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

  • Season 5

  • Gun Violence Prevention and Treatment with Dr. Stephen Hargarten

    Gun Violence Prevention and Treatment with Dr. Stephen Hargarten

    S05 E04
    42:37

    Dr. Stephen Hargarten is a Professor of Emergency Medicine, Associate Dean for Global Health, Director of the Global Health Pathway, and Director of the Comprehensive Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. His research interests reflect an intersection of injury and violence prevention and health policy to address the burden of this biosocial disease. He was the founding President of the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research and has served on the Violence and Injury Prevention Mentoring Committee for the World Health Organization. In his conversation with Amelia and Kirk, he makes a compelling argument for considering firearm injury as a disease and a public health crisis. They discuss state and federal policies that can and do affect this primarily political disease. Dr. Hargarten also explains the use of a biopsychosocial model for healing from firearm injury and calls for medical educators to include firearm injury mechanisms, prevention and treatment in curricula. Selected publications are included below. Commentary: Moving Emergency Medicine Toward the Biopsychosocial Disease Model (Hargarten S.) Annals of Emergency Medicine. November 2019;74(5):S52-S54 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85073691318 11/01/2019 Gun Violence Education in Medical School: A Call to Action (Barron A, Hargarten S, Webb T.) Teaching and Learning in Medicine. 2022;34(3):295-300 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85104939062 01/01/2022 A scoping review of patterns, motives, and risk and protective factors for adolescent firearm carriage (Oliphant SN, Mouch CA, Rowhani-Rahbar A, Hargarten S, Jay J, Hemenway D, Zimmerman M, Carter PM.) Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 15 August 2019;42(4):763-810 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85069995818 08/15/2019

  • Dignity of Risk with Adira Hulkower

    Dignity of Risk with Adira Hulkower

    S05 E03
    41:20

    Amelia and Kirk have a broad-ranging discussion with Adira Hulkower, the Director of Clinical Ethics at the Montefiore Einstein Center for Bioethics in the Bronx. She shares her experiences as a clinical ethics consultant applying the concept of Dignity of Risk to better understand the ethical implications of discharge planning for patients experiencing homelessness. They discuss healthcare institutional responsibilities related to social determinants of health broadly as well as to individual patients. The importance of intersectionality and patient narratives are explored.

  • Immigrant Health Policy with Rachel Fabi

    Immigrant Health Policy with Rachel Fabi

    S05 E02
    39:57

    We are joined by Rachel Fabi, PhD, Associate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She is a Faculty Research Affiliate at the Syracuse University Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. She received her Ph.D. in Health Policy and Management, in the Bioethics and Health Policy track, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and served as the 2019-2021 National Academy of Medicine Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics.Dr. Fabi shares her insights on policies that affect the health of immigrants and refugees in the United States, and discusses her research on a broad range of topics such as access to care, reproductive health and treatment in ICE detention. Listen to the end for her insights into the role of physician advocacy.