Programs

Engaging in Advance Care Planning discussions with loved ones is vital to the health and well-being of each of us.  The Center is a national leader in shared decision making, especially in serious illness and end of life.

The Center offers ethics education to healthcare professionals, students and ethics committee volunteers.

The Center offers guidance in healthcare ethics to patients and family members, health and healthcare organizations and to local, state, and national policy makers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare

The positive and negative implications of AI in Healthcare pose incredible promise and massive risk. Potential harms resulting from implicit bias will influence access to care, treatment, and health outcomes.

The Center’s John B. Francis Chair, Erika Blacksher, PhD, works in deliberative democracy which can be referred to as civic or deliberative engagement. Dr. Blacksher studies ethical and policy questions raised by health inequalities in the U.S. associated with social class, race, ethnicity, geography and gender, and the role of civic engagement in advancing health equity and social justice.

The Center has included the under-treatment of pain among its focus areas for more than two decades. PAINS-KC is a group of Citizen Leaders who gather monthly for education, advocacy and awareness. They share lived experience with research partners across the metro area to increase understanding of chronic pain and the value of including those who live with it in their research. They also collaborate with policymakers and pain advocacy organizations to promote comprehensive, integrative pain management.