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Many people have made significant contributions to the success of the Center for Practical Bioethics. Some, though, have gone beyond the call, making extraordinary efforts to advance the Center’s mission to raise and respond to ethical issues in health and healthcare.
For those individuals we have conferred a special designation — Center Fellow. The designation honors each person for their contributions to the Center and positions each to continue their work with the organization.
“Each of these individuals has worked tirelessly to advance the mission and vision of the Center,” says Myra Christopher, president and CEO of the Center. “They are proven professionals and scholars with an undeniable commitment to the Center.”
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Erika Blacksher, PhD
Erika Blacksher is an assistant professor in the department of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington. Her research examines the ethical and policy implications of the social determinants of and social inequalities in health.
She is particularly interested in these issues as they relate to U.S. health reform, health promotion and community participation in health, the developmental origins of health, and theories of social justice in public health. In addition to normative research, she has developed a line of empirical inquiry to identify the public’s values and priorities as they relate to health disparities and public health.
Recent scholarly publications have addressed children’s health inequalities, public values and views on social inequalities in health, the health responsibility debate, and public deliberation as a method of public engagement.
Prior to joining the University of Washington, Blacksher was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University in New York City and a scholar of public health ethics and policy at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York. She has masters and doctoral degrees in bioethics from the University of Virginia and undergraduate degrees in both philosophy and journalism from the University of Kansas.
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Gary Pettett, MD
 When it comes to research involving human subjects, Gary Pettett, MD, believes we need more “principled investigators” than “principal investigators.”
Dr. Pettett draws that conclusion from more than twenty years of experience in research bioethics. He currently chairs the Pediatric Institutional Review Board at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and is a member of its Research Council.
Dr. Pettett first became associated with the Center in the late 1990’s when the Center began forming a consortium of institutional review boards. Dr. Pettett and Don Reynolds, a program associate at the Center, formed the Kansas City IRB Consortium to share best practices, produce common educational programs for all IRB members, and discuss IRB issues and concerns in a confidential manner.
“The concept of the Center for Practical Bioethics is unique,” says Dr. Pettett. “With all the challenges in clinical research these days, it is imperative for professionals to find a neutral ground to discuss these issues. The Center plays that role.”
As a Fellow at the Center, Dr. Pettett says he will continue pursuing areas of interest, including the ethical dimensions of human subject research and professionalism in medicine.
“The two areas are closely linked,” Dr. Pettett says. “When the public loses confidence in the moral character of medicine and research, government responds with regulatory mandates. And that inserts new challenges into the physician/patient relationship.”
Dr. Pettett believes the public views medicine skeptically these days because physicians have lost their professional anchor. “We need to speak in the patient’s best interest and less about our own welfare,” he says. “We need to become an advocate for our patients.”
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Robert Potter, MD, PhD
Some people never really retire. They just keep moving to the next challenge.
Such is the case with Dr. Robert Potter.
He spent ten years at the Center for Practical Bioethics advancing ethics in the medical profession. That was after receiving a doctorate in religion and psychology with an emphasis in ethics from the University of Chicago Divinity School. And that was after retiring from a 30-year internal medicine and geriatrics practice in Kansas City, Kansas.
He was also associate clinical professor of medicine for Kansas University School of Medicine during his entire career.
Today, Dr. Potter is the Director of the Interprofessional Ethics Fellowship at the Center for Ethics in Healthcare at Oregon Health Sciences University. “This position allows me to continue what I always wanted to do—raise the ethical excellence of health care professionals,” Dr. Potter says.
“I am now remembering so much of what the Center for Practical Bioethics taught me in the formative past.”
A modest statement, to be sure, considering Dr. Potter’s significant contributions to the Center for Practical Bioethics. Those contributions began in the early 1990’s as Dr. Potter observed the growing influence of the Center through the work of Myra Christopher and Dr. Bill Bartholome.
“The Center was starting the discussion on medical ethics in a very important way, certainly raising the bar on ethics and professionalism,” Dr. Potter says. Dr. Potter believes the Center practices “bipolar bioethics,” allowing for individuals and organizations with disparate viewpoints to find a safe place to identify common ground.
That capacity, Dr. Potter says, created a national presence for the Center and its work.
“Our project with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Community State Partnerships to Improve End-of-Life Care) really placed the Center in the national spotlight,” he says. “Kansas City became a practical lab to try things before going national. Bioethics was not just an abstract concept anymore.”
As for his future as a Fellow of the Center for Practical Bioethics, Dr. Potter sees much work to be done on the social justice issue of the day – providing medical care for all at an affordable price.
“It’s a compelling call that I sense is being heard by my medical students in Oregon,” he says. “If we can’t deal with that, then bioethics ability to guide medicine is greatly diminished.”
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Don Reynolds, J.D.
 From mortgage banker to advocate for the disabled. That’s not a career path many take. For Don Reynolds, it’s a path that has led to his designation as a Fellow at the Center for Practical Bioethics.
Reynolds joined the Center as a member in the summer of 1985.
You could argue that he didn’t have much choice – his sister, Mary Beth Blake, is a co-founder of the organization. “Mary Beth was central to my initial involvement with the Center,” Reynolds says, “and joining was my symbolic support of her effort.”
Fortunately, his contributions over the past two decades have been much more than symbolic.
Reynolds’ initial endeavor with the Center was a joint project with the Jackson County Public Administrator to solicit expressions of healthcare preferences from people who the Public Administrator served as guardian. “The project was intended to address the limitations that the Missouri Supreme Court's decision in the Nancy Cruzan case placed on a guardian's authority to make end-of-life healthcare decisions for wards,” says Reynolds.
The project established a relationship with the University of Missouri – Kansas City’s Institute for Human Development to address healthcare decision-making by people with developmental disabilities. The thread of this work led to Reynold’s involvement in Last Passages - a national project that addressed end-of-life healthcare decision-making by and for people with disabilities.
Since that beginning, Reynolds has been a committed advocate of long-term care ethics and to others that he refers to as “lesser situated.”
Reynolds is credited with developing a person-centered methodology for involving people with disabilities in their healthcare, developing a mediation model for long-term care ethics case consultations, and using tele-ethics technology to conduct such case consultations.
He also wrote the first draft of what became one of the Center’s signature tools for individuals and their families to make practical preparations for end-of-life decisions – the Caring Conversations workbook.
As a Center Fellow, Reynolds plans to maintain his ties to the Center. Not surprisingly, he also plans to serve as a resource for the Center to continue addressing the ethics issues that confront people with disabilities.
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