Education
Undergraduate Programming
Bioethics Programming for Undergraduates
The institute has partnered with collaborators around the University of Pittsburgh to create opportunities for undergraduate students at the University to be exposed to the multitude of ethical dilemmas that they will encounter in health-related academic and clinical contexts as well as an introduction to the frameworks used to resolve those dilemmas.
Bioethics Certificate
A practical, interdisciplinary and in-depth exploration of bioethical issues for undergraduate students with a particular focus on public health ethics, medical ethics and research ethics. As a student in this 18-credit certificate program, you will acquire translatable skills required to analyze and resolve a wide breadth of ethical issues applicable to a variety of health care environments such as public health, community health, acute care, home care/hospice care/palliative care, human subjects research, long-term care, rehabilitation and private practice.
The certificate focuses on ethical, legal and societal issues in population health and individual health including health equity (particularly in relation to at-risk populations), end-of-life decision making, informed consent, decision-making capacity, confidentiality and privacy, organ donation, religious and cultural implications in health and medicine, conflict resolution, human subjects research and distribution of scarce resources.
Ethics In Action Experiential-Learning Seminar Series
The School of Public Health Bioethics Program hosts a seminar series held six times a year. The events consist of a presentation and activities related to the presentation to further engage with the content, a hallmark of experiential learning. Speakers are invited from within the University and Greater Pittsburgh area to speak about a variety of bioethics-related topics. Students who attend have the opportunity to earn Outside the Classroom (OCC) and Honors OCC credit through the submission of a brief reflective exercise. Students are recognized for sustained participation. This seminar is held in person in the School of Public Health and via Zoom to ensure that students from other campuses have the ability to participate in bioethics programming.
If you are interested in being a speaker or attendee, please contact Cindy McCarthy at cindy.mccarthy@pitt.edu.
National Bioethics Bowl Team and Club
The National Bioethics Bowl Team and Club are open to all undergraduates on the Pittsburgh campus. Team and club members spend the fall engaging in the development of communication and leadership skills. The spring semester is spent preparing for the national competition, which generally takes place in April of each year. The competition consists of teams engaging in collegial discourse regarding complex bioethics cases that have been nationally vetted. Teams prepare pro and con responses to a series of prompts related to up to 16 cases. Preparing responses for competition, exposes student to a wide variety of bioethics theories and concepts while honing skills in professional communication, teamwork, critical thinking skills, leadership and more.
For more information, please contact Cindy McCarthy at cindy.mccarthy@pitt.edu.