2018-19 Seminar Series
Free and open to the public, lunchtime lecture series hosts top national experts in bioethics
Ethics for Lunch
Monthly discussion at Johns Hopkins Hospital about about an important clinical ethics issue
Jan 28
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Alicia Ely Yamin, Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and the Program Director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative, continues the Berman Institute’s 2018-19 Seminar Series with her talk, “Power, Suffering and the Struggle for Dignity: Human Rights Frameworks for Health and Why They Matter,” on Monday, Jan. 28 at noon in the School of Public Health’s Feinstone Hall.
Bloomberg School of Public Health Feinstone Hall
Feb 4
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
The number of children with medical complexity (CMC) is steadily rising, as more and more children survive once-fatal conditions but have chronic dependence on medical technologies and therapies. The Levi Symposium will bring together diverse stakeholders from across Maryland and national CMC experts for the panel discussion, “Defining ‘Good Outcomes’ for Children, Families, and Systems of Care in the Context of Pediatric Medical Complexity.”
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Chevy Chase Auditorum
Feb 11
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Alex John London, Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, continues the Berman Institute’s 2018-19 Seminar Series with this talk, “Ethical and Regulatory Issues With Autonomous Vehicles,” on Monday, Feb. 11.
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Zayed 2117
Mar 11
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
David Jones, the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University, will continue the 2018-19 Berman Institute Seminar Series with his talk, “Must Innovators Study the Unintended Consequences of New Therapies? Lessons from Cardiac Therapeutics,” on March 11.
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Zayed 2117
Mar 25
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Marion Danis, Head of the Section on Ethics and Health Policy in the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, will continue the 2018-19 Berman Institute Seminar Series with the talk, “Engaging the Public in Setting Health Care Priorities,” on March 25.
Bloomberg School of Public Health Feinstone Hall
Apr 8
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Brian Carter, William T. and Marjorie Sirridge Professor in Medical Humanities at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, will continue the Berman Institute’s 2018-19 seminar series when he delivers the Hutzler-Rives Memorial Lecture: “Insights from patienthood: A pediatrician and bioethicist’s reflections on pediatric palliative care” on April 8.
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Zayed 2117
Apr 22
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Effy Vayena will continue the 2018-19 Berman Institute Seminar Series with the talk, “Digital Health Ethics: The Systemic Oversight Approach.” Her current research focus is on ethical and policy questions in personalized medicine and digital health.
Bloomberg School of Public Health Feinstone Hall
May 13
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Holly Fernandez Lynch, John Russell Dickson, MD Presidential Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, will continue the Berman Institute’s 2018-19 Seminar Series with “Evaluating IRB Quality and Effectiveness” on May 13.
Lynch says, “Empirical data demonstrate many problems with the existing system of research ethics oversight by Institutional Review Boards, including inconsistency, delay, burden, and nontransparency. However, evaluating positive elements of IRB quality and effectiveness is far more challenging. How can we tell if IRBs are successfully doing what they were created to do and whether efforts to reform the system will improve outcomes?”
Lynch is also the Assistant Faculty Director of Online Education, helping to lead the university’s first online master’s degree, the Master of Health Care Innovation, and other online offerings. Her scholarly work primarily focuses on human subjects research ethics and regulation, with current projects relating to voluntariness in research participation, defining and evaluating Institutional Review Board quality and effectiveness, access to investigational products, and patient engagement in research. Professor Fernandez Lynch is the author of Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise in 2008 (MIT Press), and has also co-edited several volumes on topics including human subjects research; biospecimens research; FDA policy; “nudging” health; law, religion, and health; big data and health care; and transparency in health care. She has been involved with sponsored research projects addressing the health of professional football players, recruitment of participants to clinical trials, and oversight of patient-centered outcomes research.
Professor Fernandez Lynch was appointed to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2014; she is also an active member of the SACHRP Subcommittee on Harmonization. She served as Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School from 2012-2017, and was Teaching Faculty at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. Before that, she practiced FDA law at Hogan & Hartson, LLP (now Hogan Lovells), served as a bioethicist with the Human Subjects Protection Branch at the NIH’s Division of AIDS, and was Senior Policy and Research Analyst for President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
Professor Fernandez Lynch received her BA in health and societies, her JD, and her Master of Bioethics all from the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate, she participated in LDI’s Summer Underrepresented Minority Research (SUMR) program in 2002.
Bloomberg School of Public Health Feinstone Hall