Montefiore-Einstein Certificate Program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities
The Montefiore-Einstein Certificate Program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities is a graduate course designed to educate health care, law and business professionals in the essential principles and practical clinical applications of bioethics. The curriculum introduces the foundations of moral theory, key principles of bioethical and legal analysis, methods of ethical reasoning and the skills necessary to apply bioethics. The program is a weekly three hour seminar with a two day retreat during each semester. The seminar format encourages lively discussion of issues and rigorous analysis of texts, including clinical narratives, pertinent legal cases and major judicial opinions, historical documents and relevant literature.
Core Faculty
Dr. Tia Powell is the Director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics. She formerly served as the Executive Director of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, the Governor-appointed entity that develops bioethics policy for the State of New York. She has provided ethics expertise to government panels in a variety of roles, including the New York State Cardiac Advisory Committee, the Empire State Stem Cell Board Ethics Committee, and the federal Secretary's Advisory Committee for Human Research Protections (SACHRP) among others. She served as co-chair of the New York State Task Force on Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic. Dr. Powell graduated from Yale Medical School, and completed her internship, psychiatric residency and Consultation-Liaison fellowship at Columbia. She founded the ethics consult service at Columbia Presbyterian in 1993. She is the last participating member of the original faculty of the Certificate Program in Bioethics and the Humanities, having helped create the program at its inception in 1994. She has published and presented extensively in the field of bioethics.
Janet Dolgin is the Jack and Freda Dicker Distinguished Professor of Health Care Law at Hofstra Law School and is the co-director of the Institute for Health Law Studies at Hofstra. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Princeton University and a J.D. from Yale University. Professor Dolgin's scholarly work combines her training in anthropology and in law. In recent years, she has focused on analyzing how shifting understandings of personhood and of community have stimulated changes in both health care and family life in the United States. Professor Dolgin has authored several books and dozens of articles. She lectures widely in the United States and abroad about health care law, family law, and bioethics.
Erika Blacksher, PhD, is a Research Scholar for public health ethics and policy at The Hastings Center. Her research focuses on the ethical and policy implications of the social determinants and distribution of health, with particular interest in children's health inequalities and the implications for theories of social justice and social policy. After completing her doctorate at the University of Virginia in 2006, Dr. Blacksher spent two years at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Social Inequalities in Health as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar.
Adrienne Asch, PhD, MS is the Edward and Robin Milstein Professor of Bioethics at the University's Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the founding director of The Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University. Her work focuses on the ethical, political, psychological, and social implications of human reproduction and the family. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters, and is the co-editor of Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights and The Double-Edged Helix: Social Implications of Genetics in a Diverse Society. She received her doctorate in social psychology from Columbia University, was a member of the board of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the Clinton Task Force on Health Care Reform, and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Policy Planning Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute. She is a board member of the Society of Jewish Ethics and a fellow at the Hastings Center.
Alvan Ikoku, MD is currently a PhD Candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He holds a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University, an M.Phil in History of Medicine from the University of Oxford, and MA in African Literature from London's School of Oriental and African Studies, and an MD from Harvard Medical School. His research combines his training in history, literature and medicine with a focus on the literary analysis of medical and public health writing.
Course Information
The program is open to physicians, nurses, attorneys, judges, social workers, administrators, chaplains, and others who work in health care. The application deadline for the 2009-2010 year is May 1, 2009. Download the application here.
Please call 718-920-4630 for more information.
