ASBH 2014 - Update

The American Society of Bioethics & Humanities (ASBH) will hold its 16th annual meeting from October 16-19 in San Diego.  



As a member of the program committee (along with Rebecca Garden and Sarah Shannon), I wanted to share two updates about the meeting.



Plenary Speakers



We have confirmed three plenary speakers:

• Patricia Benner, R.N., Ph.D, FAAN, FRCN, a preeminent nursing educator and author of From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Nursing Practice. 


• Xóchitl Castañeda, Ph.D., Director of Health Initiative of the Americas, School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley


• Karla Holloway, M.A., M.L.S., Ph.D., James B. Duke Professor of English & Professor of Law at Duke University, an expert on ethics, law, literature, gender, and culture.

Conference Theme



The theme for the conference is "Interprofessional & Inclusive: Bioethics & Humanities?"  Here is the description:  

Bioethics and the health humanities purport to offer guidance on how to act ethically in collaboration with patients, their families and support circles, and within the health care system. As fields of study and practice, they call attention to power and disparities, from the classroom to the clinic. They expose injustice and act to right wrongs.   

But how well do the health humanities and bioethics truly recognize power and privilege?  They are multi-disciplinary, but are they interprofessional?  They are inclusive, but how well do they represent differences in identity, such as race and ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender, and socio-economic status?   

This Annual Meeting is dedicated to three questions: (1) How inclusive and interprofessional are bioethics and the health humanities? (2) How inclusive and interprofessional can we become? (3) How can we improve practice, education, and health for all, through attention to inclusion and interprofessionalism?

We look forward to seeing you in San Diego in October.