Berman Institute Monthly Newsletter July 2021
July 2021
Announcements
Berman Institute faculty have created the COVID-19 Maternal Immunization Tracker (COMIT), a newly launched online resource providing a global snapshot of public health policies that shape access to COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant and lactating people. Read our announcement here.
Anne Barnhill was awarded a grant from The Greenwall Foundation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, state governments adopted policies that profoundly affected personal and public life, in some cases imposing costs, curtailing freedom and exacerbating inequities. It’s often claimed that such high-stakes policy decisions should be ethically assessed, should account for the diverse perspectives and values held by the public, and should be clearly explained and justified to the public. This project aims to improve the frequency and quality of such activities by creating ethics guidance and tools that are fine-tuned to real-world pandemic policy-making contexts.
Prof. Fanzo Awarded $3.8 Million to Apply Human Rights-Based Approach to Food Systems
The award supports the first phase of a ten-year project to strengthen the capacity of governments, peasants, and other people living in rural areas to adopt and incorporate human rights frameworks such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) into food policy and food systems action.
Gail Geller was named to the National Advisory Board of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health. Professor Geller will also serve as a Working Group Member on Direct-to-Consumer Microbiome-Based Health Testing at the University of Maryland School of Law.
Megan Collins received a Maryland Daily Record 2021 Healthcare Heroes Award.
Outreach
On June 21, Debra Mathews spoke at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Annual Meeting in a session on The Science and Ethics of Generating Gametes from Stem Cells. Her talk was titled “Reflections on the 2008 Hinxton Group Consensus Statement and a Decade of Scientific and Governance Evolution.”
On June 17, Leonard Rubenstein gave a talk titled “Syria’s conflict at ten years: ongoing violations of international humanitarian year” for the Syria Public Health Network and Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.
On June 10, Leonard Rubenstein gave a talk titled “Attacks on Healthcare and Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Five Years On from UN Security Council Resolution 2286,” at the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies, McGill University.
On June 10, Jeremy Sugarman gave a talk titled “Stem Cell Research: From bench to bedside” at the Harvard Annual Bioethics Conference.
On June 10, Gail Geller and Sheethal Jose, along with Brian Garibaldi, gave a talk titled “Should genetic testing of patients and clinicians play a role in the management and control of infectious disease outbreaks?” at the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center (NETEC) Virtual Summit.
On June 4, Leonard Rubenstein presented at the University of Manchester conference on Rethinking the History of Violence, Health and Care in Wartime, c. 1860-2000s. His talk was titled “The stubborn persistence of military necessity to rationalize violence against health care.”
Yoram Unguru gave a talk titled “Cancer Predisposition: Identification and Management in the Era of Genomic Testing” at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL on June 4.