Health Sciences
Institute for Bioethics
The institute’s mission is to advance research in bioethics and the health humanities, to educate the next generation of clinicians, scholars and leaders in ethical practice, and to foster a community of interprofessional inquiry addressing society’s pressing ethical challenges in healthcare and research.
Education
The institute supports several
educational programs across Pitt,
including graduate and undergraduate
programs in bioethics, faculty
seminars and experiential learning
opportunities.
Health Humanities and Social Sciences
The institute supports faculty and student opportunities for examining the history of medicine, sociological and cultural contexts of health care, and the role that the arts play in illuminating the experience of illness and health.
Humanistic Communication in Medicine
The institute develops and deploys an evidence-based training curriculum that aims to prepare humanistic clinicians with strong capabilities in patient-centered communication and shared decision making.
Program in Clinical Ethics
The institute partners with clinical ethicists and pastoral care staff of regional health systems and hospitals to provide ethics resources and support for the care of the whole patient.
Center for Research Ethics
The Center for Research Ethics advances study of the ethical design, implementation and implications of research to promote ethics in research and responsible use of research data and insights.
Current Grants and Scholarship
Our nationally-recognized faculty engage in normative, empirical and pedagogical research that explores ethical and practical issues in clinical care, clinical research and health policy.
News
Douglas White to Lead Bioethics Institute
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Douglas B. White, MD, MAS, vice chair and professor of critical care medicine in the School of Medicine (SOM), as the inaugural director of the newly formed Institute for Bioethics. Read More
Events
Strings Attached? The Creation of Institutional Rights of Conscience in Health Care
September 8, 2026 – 8:00am to 9:00am Healthcare and Religion Lecture Ronit Y. Stahl, PhDGary and Donna Freedman Chair in Undergraduate EducationAssociate Professor of HistoryUniversity of California, Berkeley Across the United States, religious hospitals can invoke…