Centers & Programs

The UNC Center for Bioethics provides an interdisciplinary hub for UNC faculty, health professionals and students interested in the ethical challenges facing biomedical research and health care.  The Center’s core faculty, lead collaborative research projects of local, national and international scope, provide ethics consultation services to UNC researchers and clinicians and teach with the Department of Social Medicine in the medical school curriculum.  The Center hosts the School of Medicine’s oldest endowed lecture series, the annual UNC Merrimon Lecture, and serves as the administrative hub for the state-wide Clinical Ethics Network of North Carolina.

The Center for Thriving Communities, co-directed by Giselle Corbie and Gaurav Dave, brings together community wisdom and research expertise to discover what helps people thrive where they live. Research staff and faculty work side-by-side with community members to understand what’s working and what’s getting in the way of health and wellbeing. Together, these multidisciplinary teams develop practical solutions that create opportunities for all communities to flourish. This partnership approach helps make real progress toward better health for everyone. The center also provides expertise and research support services through its core facility, Abacus Evaluation.

The UNC Center for the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of Biotechnology (formerly the Center for Genomics and Society) research framework can be applied to, and add value to, many different disciplines and applications of biotechnology beyond human genomic uses like gene-editing. These include, but are not limited to microbiome and virome genomics, robotics, AI and machine learning, funtional MRI, brain organoids, organ donation, CAR-T therapy. The mission of the Center for ELSI@UNC is to promote transdisciplinary, policy-relevant research and to provide training to those at UNC who wish to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications of biotechnology advances and their translation into clinical and public health interventions. ELSI@UNC offers research support and assistance to the broader Health Affairs community, promoting its expertise in the ELSE framework for application in genomics and other emerging technologies. The Center is a consultation resource for current projects, as well as for individuals interested in structuring grants to include an ELSI component. It also mentors future ELSI scholars by providing them with an intellectual and research community and access to faculty mentors. To that end, The Center events brings together faculty, staff, and students who share an interest in ELSI research.