ELSI Friday Forum: Biosecurity in the Age of AI and Genomics
2025-07-11 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Biosecurity in the Age of AI and Genomics
with speakers Jassi Pannu, MD, Gigi Gronvall, PhD, and moderator Stephanie Guerra, PhD.
The convergence of AI and biotechnology is reshaping both the promise and the peril of biological research, potentially increasing beneficial capabilities to achieve new therapeutics faster while also introducing new risks that nefarious actors could misuse of biology. Scientists have long considered and taken action to mitigate the dual use risks of biological materials. Recombinant DNA technologies increased the urgency of action. Now, the advent of artificial intelligence, in combination with more sophisticated genetic read and write capabilities necessitates rethinking of the moral obligations of scientists and policy makers. This session will describe the new types of risks enabled by combined data and biological technologies and discuss proposals for effective governance.

Click here to register.

Building Bridges: Data Systems for Research and Evaluation
2025-07-16 11:00 - 12:00
Building Bridges: Data Systems for Research and Evaluation | Registration
Presenter: Marlena Kuhn, MPH
With a showcase of examples, learn how practical applications of integrating data tools and processes can build systems that facilitate research and evaluation. Examples will range from recruiting for clinical trials to evaluating published research impact.
Register: https://go.unc.edu/BridgesRegistration

Neuroethics Grand Rounds: Christine Grady, MSN, PhD
2025-09-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Cancer Hospital Conference Room 1 – Sanofi Aventis, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Save the Date

Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

Thursday, September 4, 2025
12:00 – 1:00 pm ET
Location: Cancer Hospital Conference Room 1-Sanofi Aventis

Christine Grady, MSN, PhD

Dr. Grady is a nurse-bioethicist and a senior investigator who is the former Chief of the Department of Bioethics. Dr. Grady has published widely in the biomedical and bioethics literature and authored or edited several books, including The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics.
Co-hosted with the Department of Neurology

Selected Publications

Hendriks S, Grady C. Ethics and Highly Innovative Research on Brain Diseases.(external link) N Engl J Med. 2024;390(23):2133-2136.

Hendriks S, Hsu N, Beckel-Mitchener AC, Ngai J, Grady C. Continuing trial responsibilities for implantable neural devices.(external link) Neuron. 2023;111(20):3143-3149.

Baffoe-Bonnie MS, Jameson Floyd K, Livinski AA, Grady C. A scoping review exploring cure definitions and language for inherited hemoglobinopathies.(external link) Genet Med Open. 2024;2.

Ulrich CM, Ratcliffe SJ, Hochheimer CJ, Zhou Q, Huang L, Gordon T, Knafl K, Richmond T, Schapira MM, Miller V, Mao JJ, Naylor M, Grady C. Informed Consent among Clinical Trial Participants with Different Cancer Diagnoses.(external link) AJOB Empir Bioeth. 2024;15(3):165-177.

Grady C. Informed Consent.(external link) N Engl J Med. 2017;376(20):e43.

Annual Pediatric Visiting Ethics Scholar: Kelly N. Michelson, MD, MPH
2025-09-18 08:00 - 09:00 | 4008 Old Clinic Auditorium
Save the Date

Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

Thursday, September 18, 2025
8:00 – 9:00 AM ET
Location: 4008 Old Clinic Auditorium

Kelly N. Michelson, MD, MPH

Director, Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM) – Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Julia and David Uihlein Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Professor, Pediatrics (Critical Care)

Kelly Michelson, MD, MPH is Professor of Pediatrics, Julia and David Uihlein Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, and Chief Ethics Officer of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is an attending physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in the division of pediatric critical care medicine.

Co-hosted with the Department of Pediatrics
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the presenter, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the contracted organization, department, School of Medicine, nor the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ethics Grand Rounds: Hugh M. Lee, J.D.
2025-09-24 12:00 - 13:00 | 4008 Old Clinic Auditorium
Save the Date

Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

Wednesday, September 24, 2025
12:00 – 1:00 pm ET
Location: 4008 Old Clinic Auditoriu

Hugh M. Lee, J.D

Teaching Professor
Co-Director of Accreditation & Continuous
Quality Improvement
Dept. of Bioethics & Interdisciplinary Studies
Brody School of Medicine
East Carolina University
In January 2015, Hugh M. Lee joined the Department of Bioethics and Interdisciplinary Studies. His research focuses on health policy and the ethics of substituted decision-making in the medical context. Prof. Lee holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Davidson College and a Juris Doctor from the Florida State University College of Law. Before joining the Department, Prof. Lee taught for 19 years at the University of Alabama School of Law.
Prof. Lee has published extensively on legal issues, such as election law, HUD housing programs, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Guardianship, and health policy, and has presented both regionally and nationally on these issues.

Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the presenter, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the contracted organization, department, School of Medicine, nor the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Beyond the Cradle: Exploring the Bioethics of Artificial Womb Technology for Extreme Prematurity
2025-10-30 - 2025-10-31 | Duke University School of Medicine
When: Thursday & Friday October 30-31, 2025
Where: Duke University School of Medicine
Who: Everyone interested in the ethics of Artificial Womb Technology for extreme prematurity (clinicians, researchers, patients, ethicists, etc.)
Cost: Free
Register Today!
Artificial womb technology is a new and groundbreaking technology aimed at helping extremely premature infants (born at 22-24 weeks of gestation) continue to develop in a fetal state. While this technology has shown success in fetal lambs and is now moving towards human trials, questions about the ethical, legal, and societal implications warrant discussion. This two-day symposium will bring together speakers to present chapters for a planned anthology intended to help inform and guide future research.
Day One:

History of Neonatal Incubation/ Dr. Jeffrey Baker, Duke University School of Medicine
History of Neonatal Innovation/ Dr. Johanna Schoen, Rutgers University
Extreme Prematurity/ Dr. Katharine Callahan, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Artificial Womb Technology/ Dr. Alan Flake, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Moral Status of the Fetonate/ Dr. James Mumford, University of Virginia
Ethics of Viability/ Dr. Christopher Collura, Mayo Clinical College of Medicine
Research Ethics/ Dr. Robert Nelson, Johnson & Johnson

Day Two:

Legal Considerations/ Dr. Henry “Hank” Greely, Stanford Law School
Maternal and Societal Considerations/ Dr. Anne Lyerly, UNC-Chapel Hill
Justice & Distribution/ Dr. Lisa McElroy, Duke University School of Medicine
Future Directions/ Dr. Felix De Bie, Duke University School of Medicine

Moral Distress and Burnout Among OB-GYNs After Dobbs
2025-11-07 12:00 - 13:00 | https://www.med.unc.edu/socialmed/event/moral-distress-and-burnout-among-ob-gyns-after-dobbs/
Nov 7 2025 | 12 – 1pm

Zoom | Free | Open to All
VISIT EVENT WEBSITE TO REGISTER

Since the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, 17 U.S. states have functionally banned abortion, creating clinical and ethical challenges for physicians practicing in these jurisdictions. In this presentation, Dr. Buchbinder will present findings from her qualitative research with obstetrician-gynecologists (OB-GYNs) providing care in states with abortion bans. Findings reveal pervasive impacts of state abortion bans on OB-GYNs—including moral distress, conflicts with clinical colleagues, health and wellbeing consequences, and reduced job satisfaction—with implications for physician health, workforce sustainability, and patient outcomes. Institutional practices to support and protect OB-GYNs in restrictive policy environments may help to mitigate the impacts of abortion bans on physicians’ wellbeing.
Learning Objectives: After this webinar, attendees will be able to:

Understand how abortion laws and policies are impacting the ability to provide comprehensive reproductive health care.
Describe ethical challenges that abortion bans raise for physicians.
Identify tangible solutions for supporting and improving professional wellbeing among clinicians engaged in reproductive healthcare.

This is an event of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs (OACA), hosted by the Center for Bioethics, and co-sponsored by the following U of MN Units: Program in Health Disparities Research, Medical School; Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, College of Liberal Arts; Community-University Health Care Center (CUHCC); Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, College of Liberal Arts; Center for the Study of Political Psychology, College of Liberal Arts; Masonic Cancer Center (MCC); Minnesota Population Center; Healthy Weight Research Center; Rural Health Research Center; Business Advancement Center for Health (BACH), Carlson School of Management, College of Pharmacy; Medical School; School of Public Health; School of Nursing.

Harvard's Mind-Body Medicine and Clinical Use of Integrative Stress-Free Reduction
2025-11-13 19:30 - 20:30 | TBD
This event was shared with the Department of Social Medicine by an undergraduate student at UNC who reached out on behalf of Pranam, a Bryan Fellowship initiative focused on advancing cultural competency and integrative approaches in healthcare.
They are hosting Dr. Darshan Mehta — Medical Director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Director of Education at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School — for a campus-wide talk on:
Mind-Body Medicine & its Integration into Clinical Practice
Thursday, November 13th at 7:30 PM
Open to undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, and pre-health students of all disciplines
This is Dr. Mehta’s signature talk given at universities and medical schools across the country.
LOCATION TBD – Follow @UNC_PRANAM on Instagram for more updates!

ELSI Friday Forum - What do researchers owe the Autistic community?
2025-11-14 12:00 - 14:00
Panelists Monique Botha, PhD and Tara Eicher, PhD, and moderator Ari Ne’eman, PhD

Click here to register.

Join us for: Ethics in Cinema
2025-11-19 17:00 - 19:00 | 321 MacNider Hall
Three Identical Strangers is a riveting documentary that traces the stranger-than-fiction, true-life story of three triplets separated at birth who later find each other as adults. Searching for answers, they discover that they were part of a research study designed to assess the power of genetics and social environment on their development.
Come and join us for a viewing of the film, followed by a discussion about how cases like theirs inform nature-versus-nurture debates and crucial ethical issues about separating siblings.

Event Details
📅 Date: November 19th
🕛 Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM
📍 Location: 321 MacNider Hall
🚨 Kindly let us know if you’re coming. We’ll have pizza ready!
Please RSVP: https://go.unc.edu/EthicsinCinema

America’s Response to Covid: What Have We Learned?
2025-12-02 17:30 - 19:00 | UNC Franker Porter Graham Student Union Auditorium
Douglas McKay (moderator)
What can we learn from America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic?  How should policymakers deal with future pandemics?  In a recent book co-authored with Stephen Macedo, Princeton professor Frances Lee argues that public health experts, policy makers, and the media failed to adequately consider the costs of lockdowns. In a conversation moderated by UNC public policy professor Douglas MacKay, Lee will discuss America’s response to COVID-19 with David Wohl, an infectious disease expert at UNC who helped lead the campus’s clinical and research response.

What Should Heroes Think of the Rest of Us? Elizabeth Harman (Princeton University) - Annual Parr | Bioethics Joint Lecture 2026
2026-01-21 12:00 - 13:00 | G-100 Bondurant

Love As the Reason We Need Abortion; Elizabeth Harman (Princeton University) - Annual Parr | Bioethics Joint Lecture 2026
2026-01-22 17:00 - 18:30

The End We Choose [RSVP - Center for Bioethics]
2026-01-26 17:00 - 18:30 | Murphey Hall 116, 204 Lenoir Drive, Chapel Hill, NC
Join us for an important and thought-provoking event exploring the realities of serious illness and end-of-life care.
Speakers:

Dr. Arlene Davis, Director of the UNC Center for Bioethics
Dr. Heather Altman, Adjunct Assistant Professor at UNC and Director of the NC Serious Illness Coalition

We’ll also feature a powerful film created by Transitions LifeCare, highlighting real patient experiences with palliative care.
While this topic may feel distant from your life now, it touches every family and community. Understanding it can shape how we think about care, dignity, and decision-making. This is a chance to engage with experts, ask questions, and reflect on an issue that matters deeply to society.

Moral Distress and Burnout Among OB-GYN After Dobbs
2026-01-29 12:00 - 13:00 | https://bioethics.unc.edu/talk/moral-distress-and-burnout-among-ob-gyn-after-dobbs/
Mara Buchbinder, PhD

OBJECTIVES
1. To understand how abortion laws and policies are impacting the ability to provide comprehensive reproductive health care.
2. To describe ethical challenges that abortion bans raise for physicians.
3. To identify tangible solutions for supporting and improving professional wellbeing among clinicians engaged in reproductive healthcare.

ELSI Friday Forum | CRISPR Therapies for Rare Pediatric Disease
2026-02-13 12:00 - 13:00

The 2025-26 Merrimon Lecture: Can We Balance Professionalism with the Extreme Financial Focus of U.S. Healthcare?
2026-02-18 12:00 - 13:00 | https://bioethics.unc.edu/talk/merrimon-lecture-2026/

Healing for Healers Symposium
2026-02-26 09:00 - 12:00
Meet the Speakers:
Adjoa Boateng Evans, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
Rimma Osipov, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Terrence Holt, MD, PhD
Associate Professor
The goal of the inaugural Duke Anesthesiology Healing for Healers Symposium is to provide Duke Health clinicians with an immersive symposium experience that can combat the depersonalization pervasive in modern medicine towards rediscovery of one’s purpose. There is growing evidence that supports the introduction of humanities-based approaches into health care as a means of healing and rediscovery. The use of art will allow participants to express aspects of their personhood often difficult to articulate in everyday language. In doing so, this symposium will also focus on promoting a holistic approach that aligns personal and professional goals with emphasis on incorporating physical, mental, and emotional well-being through the tools of narrative medicine, restorative justice, and humanism towards healing. Moreover, unbeknownst tomany, physicians take part in medical humanities exercises daily as storytelling is the bloodline of health care. In medicine, we tell stories every day. Formally, in a language and format embedded into the mind’s speech centers from the first days of medical school to informal decompression moments with colleagues. Thus, this symposium would awaken this muscle through the use of expert facilitators to guide attendees through individual and group exercises that all offer introspection toward one’s professional identity by revealing how the art of storytelling can be used as a springboard to navigate purpose. Each attendee will craft a personal mission statement.

The “Equitification” of Rights: How COVID-19 Rewrote the Story of Health and Human Rights
2026-03-04 17:30 - 19:00
Health and Human Rights Lecture

Wednesday, March 4, 2026
5:30-7:00 PM
Location: Hybrid: Rosenau 133 or Webinar

Roojin Habibi
Download flyer

The lawmaking reflexes that followed the COVID 19 pandemic have shifted global health debates away from hard won human rights norms and toward more ambiguous ideas of equity and solidarity.
In this lecture, Dr. Roojin Habibi (University of Ottawa) traces this “equitification” of rights through the negotiations that led to the 2024 International Health Regulations amendments and the 2025 WHO Pandemic Agreement, showing how these global health law reforms foreground distributive justice while sidelining decades of human rights advancements under international law.
Reflecting on the human rights implications of the COVID-19 response and subsequent reforms, this presentation will bring into focus the work of communities of practice at the intersection of health and human rights, including those behind the Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies, and illustrate how such collaborations can help re anchor pandemic law in a richer body of human rights norms and shape a fairer approach to public health emergency prevention, preparedness, and response.
Dr. Roojin Habibi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) and serves as Investigator and Research Director of Global Health Law at the Global Strategy Lab, jointly based at York University and the University of Ottawa. Her research bridges international law, public health law, and human rights, with a focus on normative interpretation and change in global health law and governance.
Webinar available at https://unc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VFza1bBGQcanoMb-0B1FeQ
Sponsored by:
UNC Public Policy
UNC Center for Bioethics
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
To learn more about this Health and Human Rights Lecture Series, please see the Public Policy website.

3rd Annual Symposium for Health Access Research in Southeastern North Carolina
2026-03-13 09:00 - 16:15

Save the Date: Book Panel on Animal Research
2026-04-09 16:00 - 17:30
Thursday, April 9, 2026
4:00-5:30 PM ET
Location: Registration Required – Kerr Hall, Lecture Hall 2001

A panel and audience discussion with a reception to follow.
An afternoon with the author of Lab Dog and esteemed panelists discussing history, ethics, and policies of animal research.

Featuring:
Melanie D.G. Kaplan, freelance journalist and author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research
Susan E. Lederer, distinguished historian and author of Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War
Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist and author of The Monkey Wars

Sponsored by: The Animal Studies Project and Parr Center for Ethics through the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Bioethics.
For students: CLE credit and credit for Parr Ethics Scholars are both available.

Joint Surgery – Bioethics Grand Rounds
2026-04-22 07:00 - 08:00
Save the Date

Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

Wednesday, April 22, 2026
7:00 am – 8:00 am
Location: Hybrid: 4th Flr Burnett-Womack Bldg and Zoom

Justin Clapp, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor
Medical Ethics & Health Policy
Perelman School of Medicine

Justin Clapp, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care and Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is also Associated Faculty in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Clapp is a linguistic and medical anthropologist who uses qualitative methods and anthropological theory to examine issues in empirical bioethics, health care communication, and medical decision-making. His primary work examines patient care trajectories in the perioperative and critical care spaces, seeking to understand how diffuse chains of health care interactions lead to the pursuit of particular treatments.

ELSI Friday Forum - Making Genomics Matter: Science, Storytelling, and Public Engagement
2026-05-08 12:00 - 13:00

Save the Date! 7th ELSI Congress 2026
2026-06-22 - 2026-06-24 | The Friday Center, 100 Friday Center Drive, Chapel Hill, NC, 27517, United States

Save the Date! Annual Pediatric Visiting Ethics Scholar - Erica K. Salter, PhD, HEC-C
2026-10-01 08:00 - 09:00 | 4008 Old Clinic Auditorium
