Tag: community engagement

Listen: Social Justice-Oriented Bioethics

No Easy Answers in Bioethics Episode 25

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This month the Center was proud to officially announce its new name: Center for Bioethics and Social Justice. This name change reflects an updated mission with a focus on social justice-oriented bioethics. This episode features a conversation between Director Sean Valles, PhD, and Assistant Director Karen Kelly-Blake, PhD. Together they discuss moving forward in the bioethics space, what engaging in service to the people means to them, and the important work to be done to a create a healthier and more socially just world. They also explore questions related to the practical application of bioethics, and the challenge of preparing medical students for clinical practice in an inequitable world.

Ways to Listen

This episode was produced and edited by Liz McDaniel in the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice. Music: “While We Walk (2004)” by Antony Raijekov via Free Music Archive, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Full episode transcript available.

About: No Easy Answers in Bioethics is a podcast series from the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. Center faculty and their collaborators discuss their ongoing work and research across many areas of bioethics. Episodes are hosted by H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online.

Dr. Tomlinson leads ‘Being Mortal’ discussion

tomlinson-crop-2016Center Director Dr. Tom Tomlinson led a discussion on Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Happens in the End on June 21, 2016 at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing. About 40 people attended this free event.

Participants brought a variety of stories of their encounters with end-of-life situations, some quite positive and others not. These inspired a wide range of discussion touching on the themes in the book: recognizing one’s mortality; being able to meet it on your own terms; tensions between preserving personal autonomy and insuring safety for those in need of some care; the failure to disclose and discuss a grim prognosis, and the resulting infliction of unwarranted aggressive treatment; meeting the family’s needs, without losing focus on the patients; and others. The event was organized by the Cantor, Pamela Schiffer, and the Rabbi Amy Bigman attended.

Linking Community Engagement Research to Public Health Biobank Practice

Ann Mongoven, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences was awarded a 5-year R01 grant in December 2010 from the National Institutes of Health. Her project, “Linking Community Engagement Research to Public Health Biobank Practice,” is part of a larger research project led by Sharon Kardia at the University of Michigan. The Michigan State University study will help drive public policy decisions and develop an improved consent process for the state’s bio-bank, known as the Michigan BioTrust. Jeff Proulx, a Health and Risk Communication graduate student, worked as a research assistant on the grant until his graduation in spring of 2012. Andrea Sexton, another Health and Risk Communication graduate student, joined the grant at that time to continue the research support. Read more about this study.