Ethical Challenges in Global Public Health

September 16, 2019

Ethical Challenges in Global Public Health

Location: Heights Room, Corcoran Commons, Boston College

This one-day conference on the “Ethical Challenges in Global Public Health: Climate Change, Pollution and the Health of the Poor” brings together a distinguished group of scholars–from Boston College, across the United States, and internationally–in ethics, law, public policy, economics, and global public health to examine some of the major ethical challenges facing global public health in the 21st century, with a particular focus on pollution and climate change.

The conference will fill an important gap in the debates and literature on global public health. Despite the clear connections between global public health and social justice, there has been surprisingly little scholarly exploration of the ethical challenges confronting global public health. We anticipate that this conference will substantially advance the emerging field of global public health ethics.

Co-sponsorships: The program in Global Public Health and the Common Good, the Theology Department, and the School of Theology and Ministry.

About Global Public Health:

Global public health is the science and art of promoting good health, preventing disease and extending longevity in countries around the world. A substantial body of scholarship in global public health is directed at elucidating the social, political, economic and environmental factors that influence patterns of health and disease and drive disparities in health.

Global public health is rooted in and aims to promote social justice. It aligns closely with the Jesuit Catholic tradition and with Pope Francis’ teaching in his encyclical letter Laudato Si’ (2015) calling upon all people to care for our planet, end social and economic injustice, prevent the disease, disability and premature death that fall disproportionately upon the poor.

The conference is coincident with the launch of Boston College’s new minor in Global Public Health and the Common Good. The conference marks the opening of this new academic program while at the same time highlighting the new minor’s commitment to study the ethical challenges confronting global public health today.

Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to submit posters that will be on display throughout the conference. See the Call for Posters. 

Conference Themes:

  • Environments and Global Health

  • The Changing Context of Global Health

  • Ethics and Equity in Global Health

  • Law and Global Health

  • Public Policy, Economics and Global Health

  • International Approaches to Global Public Health: Insights from Africa, Asia, and Europe

  • Building an Ethical Framework for Education and Research in Global Health

  • An ethical agenda for global public health

Schedule of Events

Location: Heights Room, Corcoran Commons, Boston College

Convening (8:30-9:00 AM) light continental breakfast

Opening Remarks (9:00-9:50 AM)

  1. Welcome to Boston College. Thomas C. Chiles, Vice-Provost for Research and DeLuca Professor in Biology – Boston College

  2. Environment and global public health: A neglected nexus. Walter Ricciardi, MD – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations (20’)

  3. The vital contribution of independent, ethically grounded research to the global health agenda. Kurt Straif, MD, PhD – Visiting Professor of Epidemiology, Boston College (20’)

          Moderator: Gregory Kalscheur, SJ – Boston College

Coffee Break (9:50-10:10 AM)

The Changing Context of Global Health (10:10-11:30 AM)

  1. Challenges confronting global public health today. Keith Martin, MD, Consortium of Universities for Global Health (20’)

  2. Pollution, climate change and global public health. Philip J. Landrigan, MD – Boston College (20’)

  3. A Catholic case for global public health. Michael Rozier, SJ – Saint Louis University (20’)

          Questions and Answers (20’)

          Moderator: Thomas C. Chiles – Boston College

Law and Global Health  (11:30 AM-12:30 PM)

  1. Human rights and global public health. Wendy K. Mariner – Boston University (20’)

  2. International environmental law: implications for global public health. David Wirth – Boston College (20’)

          Questions and Answers (20’)

          Moderator: Vincent D. Rougeau – Boston College

Lunch Break and Students’ Poster Session (12:30-1:10 PM)

        Boston Room and Newton Room, Corcoran Commons

Ethics and Equity in Global Health  (1:10 PM-2:30 PM)

  1. Social structures. Daniel Daly – Boston College (20’)
  2. Preferential option for the poor. Alexandre A. Martins, MI – Marquette University (20’)

  3. Social justice and the common good. Lisa Sowle Cahill – Boston College (20’)

          Questions and Answers (20’)

          Moderator: James F. Keenan, SJ – Boston College

Public Policy, Economics and Global Health (2:30-3:30 PM)

  1. Pharmaceutical pricing and the Affordable Care Act: economic perspectives. Tracy L. Regan – Boston College (20’)

  2. U.S. healthcare policy: implications for global public health. Mary Ann Chirba – Boston College (20’)

          Questions and Answers (20’)

          Moderator: M. Cathleen Kaveny – Boston College

Coffee Break (3:30-3:50 PM)

International Approaches to Global Public Health (3:50-5:10 PM)

  1. Africa: Jacquineau Azetsop, SJ – Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome (20’)

  2. Asia: Stanislaus Alla, SJ – Vidyajyoti College of Theology, Delhi (20’)

  3. Europe: Thana Cristina de Campos – Las Casas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford (20’)

          Questions and Answers (20’)

          Moderator: Andrea Vicini, SJ – Boston College

Panel: Building an Ethical Framework for Education and Research in Global Health  (5:10-6:10 PM)

  1. Minorities: Inequalities in health care distribution and access. Nadia N. Abuelezam – Boston College (10’)

  2. Maternal health: local and global ethical challenges. Joyce K. Edmonds – Boston College (10’)

  3. Families: Prevention and addressing health disparities. Summer Sherburne Hawkins – Boston College (10’)

  4. Humanitarian aid, infectious diseases and global public health. Nils Hennig – Mount Sinai School of Medicine (10’)

           Questions and Answers (20’)

           Moderator: Amy Boesky – Boston College

Closing Address (6:10-6:40 PM)

An ethical agenda for global public health. Paul E. Farmer, MD – Harvard Medical School

Reception and Students’ Poster Session (Continued)  (6:40-7:30 PM)

Boston Room and Newton Room, Corcoran Commons

(wine and light hors d’oeuvres)

Prof. Walter Ricciardi, MD

ʰǴ.²ٱ龱徱,Ѷ

ʰǴ.²ٱ龱徱 is President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. He graduated in medicine in 1986 and earned a doctorate in public health medicine in 1990 from the University of Naples. He currently holds the title of Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome where he is also Director of the Department of Public Health and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Medicine.

In addition to contributing to over 300 academic papers, primarily in the fields of Epidemiology, Health Services Research and Public Health Genomics, he is also Editor of the European Journal of Public Health, of the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice and Founding Editor of the Italian Journal of Public Health. Professor Ricciardi was Chair of the Public Health Section of the Higher Health Council.

In 2011 the Minister of Health of Italy appointed him as his representative in the State-Region Committee for the evaluation of the Italian National Health Service. Internationally, he is a member of the European Commission expert panel on “Investing in Health,” a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States of America, and has was elected President of the European Public Health Association from 2010–2014.

Prof. Walter Ricciardi, MD

ٰ.ٰܰ,Ѷ,ʳ..

ٰ.ٰis currently Visiting Professor of Epidemiology at Boston College. After medical studies in Liège (Belgium), Heidelberg and Bonn (Germany), he started his career in internal medicine in Bonn. With a fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Office he pursued an MPH at UCLA. Later, in Germany, he was assistant professor at the University of Giessen, focusing on occupational, environmental, and social medicine, and an assistant and associate professor in epidemiology and social medicine at the University of Muenster. At the same time, he completed a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the UCLA, with a focus on cancer epidemiology and epidemiologic methods.

Since 2001, he had leading positions at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), first as a senior epidemiologist, Head of the IARC Monographs programme, to classify carcinogenic hazards of all kinds of environmental exposures (chemical, biological, physical agents, and personal habits), Acting Head of a large epidemiological research group, and initiator of large international projects.

In 2014, he relaunched the IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention with a broad perspective on prevention (breast cancer screening, avoidance of obesity, and colorectal cancer screening). Since 2017 he also supervises the WHO Classification of Tumours (“Blue Books”).

In 2016 he received the Champion of Environmental Health Research Award in commemoration of fifty years of Environmental Health Research by the National Institutes of Health. In 2018, he presented the Distinguished Lecture in Occupational and Environmental Cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute..

Dr. Keith Martin, MD

ٰ.𾱳ٳѲپ,Ѷ

ٰ.𾱳ٳѲپ is a physician who, since 2012, has served as the founding Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) based in Washington, DC which gathers over 170 academic institutions from around the world.

Between 1993-2011, Dr. Martin served as a Member of Parliament in Canada’s House of Commons and held shadow ministerial portfolios in foreign affairs, international development, and health. He also served as Canada’s Parliamentary Secretary for Defense. In 2004, he was appointed to the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. His main areas of focus are in global health, foreign policy, security, international development, conservation and the environment. He is particularly interested in strengthening human resources capabilities and scaling up initiatives in low-income settings that improve environmental sustainability and human security.

As a parliamentarian, Dr. Martin created CanadaAid.ca, an online platform to facilitate partnerships between universities, governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, and the private sector. In 2006, Dr. Martin founded Canada’s first all-party Conservation Caucus in Parliament and developed an online conservation site to help mainstream sustainable conservation and environmental practices.

Dr. Martin has been on numerous diplomatic missions to areas in crisis including Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Colombia, and the Middle East. He served as a physician in South Africa on the Mozambique border during that country’s civil war. He has travelled widely in Africa. Dr. Martin is the author of more than 150 editorial pieces published in Canada’s major newspapers and has appeared frequently as a political and social commentator on television and radio. He is currently a board member of the Jane Goodall Institute, editorial board member for the Annals of Global Health and an advisor for the International Cancer Expert Corps. He contributed to the Lancet Commission on the Global Surgery Deficit, is a current commissioner on the Lancet-ISMMS Commission on Pollution, Health and Development and is a member of the Global Sepsis Alliance.

Prof. Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP

Prof. Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP

ٰ.ʳ󾱱Ի is Director of the Global Public Health and the Common Good program at Boston College and director of the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health at Boston College. He is a pediatrician, public health physician, and epidemiologist. Author of over 700 scientific publications and 10 books, in his research he uses the tools of epidemiology to elucidate connections between toxic chemicals and human health, especially the health of infants and children. He is particularly interested in understanding how toxic chemicals injure the developing brains and nervous systems of children and in translating this knowledge into public policy to protect health.

In New York City, he worked for many years in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and he was involved in the medical and epidemiologic follow-up of 20,000 9/11 rescue workers. From 2015 to 2017, he co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.

Dr. Pamela Lightsey

ʰǴ.Ѿ󲹱dz,,ʳ..

ʰǴ.Ѿ󲹱dz,, is Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy at the College for Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University, with a secondary appointment in the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. After receiving his master of public health degree at Johns Hopkins University, in 2008 Fr. Rozier worked as an ethics fellow with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. From 2008 to 2011, he was an instructor at Saint Louis University where he taught courses in global health, health and justice, and public health ethics. He was also the founding director of the College for Public Health and Social Justice’s undergraduate degree in public health and oversaw service learning activities, including several trips abroad with students.

His peer-reviewed work has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Journal of Religion and Health, and Public Health Ethics, among others. He is also a regular contributor on matters of public health and health policy to America and Health Progress, a publication of the Catholic Health Association.

His areas of research focus on goal-setting and resource allocation in low-income countries, the relationship of medical missions to the local health systems they serve and the ways public health ethics frames health challenges differently than medical ethics. Fr. Rozier lived and worked in Canada, Switzerland, and throughout Latin America.

Wendy Mariner

ʰǴ.±Ի.ѲԱ

±ԻѲԱ is Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, Professor of Law at BU School of Law, and Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on laws governing health risks, including social and personal responsibility for risk creation, human rights, health insurance, health systems, including the Affordable Care Act and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, health information privacy, and population health policy. She has published more than 100 articles in the legal, medical, and health policy literature on patients and consumers’ rights, health care reform, insurance benefits, insurance regulation, public health, AIDS policy, research with human beings, and reproductive rights, and co-authored three editions of the law school textbook, Public Health Law (third edition 2019). She also serves as a Program Chair of the Program in Health Law and Human Rights, a joint project with the Public Health Regulations Analysis Center of the National School of Public Health of the New University of Lisbon. Currently, she is Chair of the American Bar Association Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice. Professor Mariner has served on many state, national, and international boards and commissions, as well as contributing editor for health law and ethics in prestigious journals. With colleagues, she submitted amicus curiae briefs to the United States Supreme Court in cases involving health law issues, including the Affordable Care Act.

Prof. David A. Wirth

ʰǴ.ٲ.¾ٳ

ٲ¾ٳ is Professor of Law at the Boston College Law School, where he served as Director of International Programs. Prof. Wirth teaches primarily in the field of public international law, with a particularly research interest in international environmental law–an area in which he worked and practiced for more than two decades. He also taught at Harvard, M.I.T., Oxford, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the University of Virginia.

Prior to moving to academia, Prof. Wirth was Senior Attorney and Co-Director of the International Program at the Washington, D.C. office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit public interest law firm specializing in environmental issues. While there, he worked on a variety of international environmental issues, including environmental reform of World Bank and regional development banks, the “greenhouse” effect, Soviet and eastern European environmental issues, stratospheric ozone depletion, and exports of hazardous substances.

Prof. Wirth has also been Attorney-Adviser for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., where he had principal responsibility for all international environmental issues, where he was engaged in multilateral negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the UN Economic Commission for Europe, among others.

Prof. Wirth is a 1981 graduate of the Yale Law School and served as law clerk to Judge William H. Timbers of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from, respectively, Princeton University and Harvard University, at which he held a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He was also a Fulbright Scholar through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Regional Research Program. 

He served as a consultant and on advisory boards of numerous institutions of higher learning, domestic agencies, and international organizations. A prolific writer, he is the author of more than fifty articles and reports. He is also co-author of major new editions of legal texts on international organizations and environmental law.

Prof. Daniel Daly, Ph.D.

ʰǴ.ٲԾٲ,ʳ..

Between 2008 and 2019, Prof. Daniel Daly was associate professor of moral theology at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. He earned a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Boston College, in 2008. His research and publications fall into three categories. First, his current project develops a language for ethically scrutinizing global social structures to understand how social structures have a discernable moral character and to investigate how social structures facilitate or impede personal and social virtuous life.

Second, he is interested in questions in fundamental Catholic theological ethics. from happiness and the virtues, to natural law and moral norms, from the ethics of Thomas Aquinas to the common good.

Third, by focusing on medical ethics and, in particular, on death and dying, he reflects on the Catholic tradition, and on clinical decision making in an age of extraordinary medical resources and deep inequalities in access. He serves on the ethics boards of local hospitals. As a clinical medical ethicist, he assists in the adjudication of problematic cases that arise in these hospitals. In July 2019, Prof. Daly joined the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.

Prof. Alexandre A. Martins, MI, Ph.D.

Prof. Alexandre A. Martins, MI, Ph.D.

油ԻѲپԲ,ѱ, is assistant professor in the Department of Theology at Marquette University where he earned his Ph.D. in 2017. He specializes in health care ethics and social ethics, especially in the areas of public health, global health, Catholic social teaching, and liberation theology. He is also a scholar in philosophy of religion, specialized in the work of the French philosopher Simone Weil. He has engaged ethics, theology, and health care in dialogue with anthropology, philosophy, epidemiology, and medical science, by focusing on marginalized voices and addressing issues from the perspective of the poor in their marginalized communities.

He advised the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference on issues of bioethics and pastoral care. With humanitarian organizations and in academic projects, he served in areas marked by poverty and lack of adequate health care assistance, such as Brazil, Bolivia, and Haiti.

Widely published, he has lectured in various countries. He was a visiting scholar at Saint Camillus University in São Paulo, Brazil, and at the Camillianum–International Institute of Pastoral Theology in Health at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He is also member of the Latin American Regional Committee of the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church and of the Brazilian Society of Moral Theology.

Cahill

ʰǴ.Ƿɱ䲹󾱱

ٰ.䲹󾱱 received her BA in Theology from Santa Clara University in 1970, followed by M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she wrote her dissertation under the supervision of James Gustafson. She is J. Donald Monan Professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College, where she has taught since 1976. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Yale University, and Dharmaram University in Bangalore, India.

Dr. Cahill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has held office in the American Academy of Religion. She was president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics. She served as an editor, or on the editorial boards of many prestigious journals. In addition, she has been a member of the Catholic Health Association Theology and Ethics Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Board for Ethics in Reproduction, and served on the March of Dimes National Bioethics Committee. She has given testimony to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on fetal tissue research and on cloning.

Her areas of interest and expertise, and very extensive publications, comprise the whole field of theological ethics. She has written or edited sixteen books and she is the author of over 200 essays that appeared in books or journals.

Prof. Tracy L. Regan

ʰǴ.հ.𲵲

ʰǴ.հ𲵲 is an applied microeconomist who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2003. She joined the Economics Department at the University of Miami and was a Visiting Scholar and then full-time lecturer in the Department of Economics in the Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona. In 2013 Regan joined the Economics Department at Boston College as an Associate Professor of the Practice.

She has extensive teaching experience with specializations in introductory microeconomics, labor economics, health economics, and industrial organization. Her research agenda combines her interests in labor economics–(gender) wage gaps, language acquisition, and the economics of the family–and on health economics–the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance market, risky health behaviors, student identity, and adolescent academic outcomes. Regan has also published in the prestigious journals.

At Boston College, Regan has become involved in a wide variety of activities and committees that include the Women’s Center, the Athletics Department, the Lonergan Institute, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program.

Prof. Mary Ann Chirba

ʰǴ.ѲԲ󾱰

ѲԲ󾱰 is John Ford Distinguished Scholar at the Boston College Law School. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Colgate University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from the Boston College Law School. She holds a Doctorate of Science in Health Policy and Law as well as a Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the 2-volume treatise Health Care Reform: Law and Practice - A Comprehensive Guide to the Affordable Care Act and its Implementing Regulations.

Since 1984, Prof. Chirba has taught a variety of courses at Boston College Law School. She is a full Professor of Legal Reasoning and a member of the Law School’s health law faculty. Prof. Chirba holds a joint faculty appointment with the Tufts Medical School and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU Law School. In past years, Prof. Chirba was an adjunct faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health. She lectured on a various health law issues at Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital of Boston, and Brandeis University.

Prof. Chirba serves as a member of numerous advisory boards. She published and spoken extensively on the Affordable Care Act. She was also invited to present at the World Stem Cell Summit and other domestic and international conferences on the national and international regulations of adult stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine.

Prof. Jacquineau Azetsop, S.J.

ʰǴ.ܾԱ𲹳ٲDZ,..

ܾԱ𲹳ٲDZ is a Jesuit originally from Cameroon. He a holds a Ph.D. in social ethics from Boston College with a thesis focusing health inequality and social justice. He also earned a Masters of Public Health from the Bloomberg School of Public health at Johns Hopkins University and a licentiate in theological ethics from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

Jacquineau taught health policy, social aspects in public health, medical deontology and bioethics at the N’Djamena University’s School of Health Sciences and at the school of medicine of the Catholic University of Mozambique in Beira. Since 2014, he has been teaching courses on socioeconomic inequality, structural interventions in public health, social suffering and the sociology of health and illness at the Gregorian University in Rome, where he is the current dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.

His broad research interests include cultural practices and human rights as related to health promotion, social ethics and health systems challenges, AIDS and social justice, Christianity and politics in Africa. He has published widely, including more than 20 research papers and book chapters and two books: Structural violence, population health and health equity and the edited volume HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian reflections, Public Health and Social Transformation.

Prof. Stanislaus Alla, S.J., Ph.D.

ʰǴ.ٲԾܲ,..,ʳ..

ʰǴ.ٲԾܲ is a Jesuit from Andhra Pradesh, India, and teaches at the Vidyajyoti College of Theology, Delhi. He obtained a licentiate in Moral Theology from the Alfonsiana Academy in Rome, and a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Boston College. At Vidyajyoti he teaches courses in fundamental moral theology, virtue ethics, bioethics, and sexual ethics. He published on health care issues in the Indian context, by engaging Hindu bioethics.

Prof. Stanislaus Alla, S.J., Ph.D.

ٰ.ճ󲹲ԲپԲ䲹Dz

Dr. de Campos is Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is also a Research Associate at the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights (Rome); the Von Hügel Institute (St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge); and at Las Casas Institute (Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford). She holds a D.Phil. in Law from the University of Oxford, and an M.Phil. in International Law from the University of Sao Paulo.
Dr. de Campos researches in global bioethics, international human rights, legal theory, political and moral philosophy, with a particular interest in natural law, virtue ethics, global health governance, and the human right to health.

Besides numerous articles in prestigious journals, in 2017, she published the volume The Global Health Crisis: Ethical Responsibilities. Forthcoming is a co-edited book on The Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law.

Prof. Nadia N. Abuelezam, Sc.D.

ʰǴ.徱.ܱ,..

Nadia Abuelezam is assistant professor at the Connell School of Nursing at Boston College and an epidemiologist. She has expertise in biostatistics, mitigating health inequities for minority health, and data analytic approaches in public health. Her current research focuses on immigrant health and, particularly, on women’s health and mental health outcomes. She relies on quantitative methods and novel data streams to better understand the inequalities in health care distribution and access in resource poor settings and among vulnerable populations.

Prof. Joyce K. Edmonds, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N.

ʰǴ.Dz⳦.峾DzԻ,ʳ..,...,..

Joyce Edmonds is associate professor at the Connell School of Nursing at Boston College. Her primary research concentration is in maternal health. She approached this topic from a public health perspective in the domestic and global context, exploring factors that influence maternal mortality and cesarean delivery rates. Themes of her research include women’s childbirth beliefs and health seeking behaviors; the influence of social and cultural factors on birth outcomes; and the influence of the nursing profession on interventions and outcomes in childbirth. She is currently investigating how to measure the influence of labor and delivery nurses on birth outcomes and the factors that shape their practice patterns. She supports physiologic labor and birth in childbearing women and aims at improving the quality and equity of maternity care services.

Prof. Summer Sherburne Hawkins, Ph.D., M.S.

ʰǴ.ܳܰԱᲹɰ쾱Բ,ʳ..,..

dzٱʰǴڱǰ ܳܰԱᲹɰ쾱Բ joined the Boston College School of Social Work faculty in 2012. She is a social epidemiologist interested in addressing policy-relevant research questions in maternal and child health. Her research examines the impact of policies on health disparities in parents and children, particularly using methodology that integrates epidemiology and economics.

Dr. Hawkins published on the topics of parental and adolescent tobacco use, infant feeding practices, and childhood obesity as well as the impact of state and local policies on disparities in these health behaviors and outcomes. A more recent area of her research focuses on the role of the Affordable Care Act on the uptake of preventive health services. In January 2017, she received a 3-year grant from the American Cancer Society (ACA) titled: Impact of the ACA on the prevention and early detection of women’s cancers.

Dr. Hawkins is currently on the editorial board of the journal Maternal and Child Nutrition and an active member of the University Research Council at Boston College. Prior to joining 㽶SSW, Dr. Hawkins was a Cohort 7 Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Prof. Nils Hennig, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H.

Prof. Nils Hennig, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H.

Prof. Nils Hennig is the Director of the Master of Public Health Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Mount Sinai Global Health Center.

Dr. Hennig, an expert in humanitarian aid, infectious diseases and public health, has broad international health experience. He worked for the past fifteen years as physician, medical director, research coordinator, advisor, and medical consultant for Médecins Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde MENTOR (Malaria Emergency Technical and Operational Response), the Fogarty International Center of the National Institute of Health, EarthRights International, Projecto Xingu and other international organizations in humanitarian emergencies, fact finding missions, development, and research in the U.S. and many countries in the Global South–in Africa, Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, and Southern America.

Dr. Hennig has a long record of training medical and public health staff of various international organizations and ministries of health in public health and infectious diseases. Dr. Hennig works clinically as attending at the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Clinic at Mount Sinai, providing comprehensive care to infected/affected infants, children, adolescents and young adults. He also continues international relief work, research, advocacy and training for multiple agencies.

Prof. Paul E. Farmer, M.D., Ph.D.

Prof. Paul E. Farmer, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Paul Farmer is Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Blavatnik Institute, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, at the Harvard Medical School.

With his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad, he pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and other countries. This work is documented in prestigious journals.

An engaging speaker, Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health and human rights, about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and about global health. His most recent books are In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez and Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. Other titles include: To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation, Haiti After the Earthquake, Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, The Uses of Haiti, and AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. In addition, Dr. Farmer is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS: Sex, Drugs and Structural Violence, The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, and Global Health in Times of Violence.

Prof. Gregory Kalscheur, S.J.

Prof. Gregory Kalscheur, S.J.

Prof. Gregory Kalscheur is Dean of the Morrissey College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Boston College. He joined the Boston College Law faculty in 2003. He received his A.B. in 1985 from Georgetown University, and his J.D. in 1988 from the University of Michigan, where he served on the editorial board of the journal Michigan Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Judge Kenneth F. Ripple, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and worked as a litigator at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C.

Previously, Dean Kalscheur served as Adjunct Professor of Political Science and Assistant to the Director of the Center for Values and Service at Loyola College in Maryland and as Associate Pastor at St. Raphael the Archangel Church in Raleigh, N.C.

Prof. Kalscheur’s primary teaching and research interests include law and religion, constitutional law, civil procedure, Catholic social thought and the law, and the contributions of Ignatian spirituality to the character of legal education at a Jesuit law school.

Prof. Thomas C. Chiles

Prof. Thomas C. Chiles

Thomas Chiles is DeLuca Professor in Biology and Vice Provost for Research and Academic Planning and at Boston College. He received his B.S. in Microbiology and Cell Science from the University of Florida; his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Florida College of Medicine. He was also a post-doctoral fellow at Boston University School of Medicine in the Immunology/Oncology Training Program, as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA fellow.

He joined the faculty at Boston College in 1992. He served as Chair of the Biology Department. He also served on several National Institutes of Health study sections, including Hypersensitivity, Autoimmune and Immune-mediated Diseases and currently serves on the Cancer Biology special emphasis panel at the National Cancer Institute.

He has served on numerous editorial boards, including as Section Editor for the Journal of Immunology. He is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and American Society of Hematologists. He is currently serving on editorial board of Frontiers in Immunology and served on the Commission on Pollution, Health and Development in partnership with the Lancet, the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Prof. Vincent D. Rougeau

Prof. Vincent D. Rougeau

Vincent Rougeau became Dean of Boston College Law School in 2011. He previously served as a professor of law at Notre Dame, and served as their Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. He received his A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he served as articles editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.

A vocal advocate for change in legal education, Dean Rougeau writes and speaks extensively on legal education reform. He has served as a member of the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), and on the Council of the Boston Bar Association. He currently serves as chair of the AALS Deans Steering Committee.

Dean Rougeau is an expert in Catholic social thought. His current research and writing consider the relationship between religious identity and notions of democratic citizenship and membership in highly mobile and increasingly multicultural democratic societies. He serves as Senior Fellow at the Centre for Theology and Community in London.

Dean Rougeau’s teaching interests are in contract and real estate law, as well as in law and religion. He is a member of the bar in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Before entering the academy, he practiced law at the Washington, DC office of Morrison & Foerster.

Prof. James F. Keenan, S.J.

Prof. James F. Keenan, S.J.

At Boston College, James Keenan is Canisius Professor in the Theology Department, Director of Jesuit Institute, and Director of the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program. He earned his doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome and taught at Fordham University, and Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He held the Gasson Chair at Boston College and then the Founders Professorship in Theology.

He authored and edited over a dozen of books, hundreds of articles and book chapters, and founded and directed the Moral Traditions Series of volumes in theological ethics published by Georgetown University Press.

Globally, he was the founder and co-chair of the network Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church and contributed to organize regional and global conferences and two books series. Member of numerous boards, he was also consultor of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops for the Revision of the Ethical Guidelines for Catholic Health Care Institutions, the New York State Transplant Council, and was Group Leader of the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Responsible Sexual Conduct.

Prof. M. Cathleen Kaveny

Prof. M. Cathleen Kaveny

Prof. Cathleen Kaveny, a scholar who focuses on the relationship of law, religion, and morality, joined the Boston College faculty in 2014 as the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor, a position that includes appointments in both the department of theology and the law school. She is the first faculty member to hold such a joint appointment. A member of the Massachusetts Bar since 1993, Prof. Kaveny clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an associate at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray in its health law group.

Prof. Kaveny published four books and over a hundred articles and essays, in journals and books specializing in law, ethics, and medical ethics. She serves on the masthead of Commonweal as a regular columnist and she is the chair of the board of trustees of the Journal of Religious Ethics as well as on a number of editorial boards. She has been the president of the Society of Christian Ethics.

She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, Yale University, and Georgetown University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center. In Fall 2018 she was awarded the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. Before joining Boston College, she taught law and theology at the University of Notre Dame, where she was John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law.

Prof. Andrea Vicini, S.J.

Prof. Andrea Vicini, S.J.

Andrea Vicini is Michael P. Walsh Professor of Bioethics in the Theology Department at Boston College. He is an alumnus of Boston College (S.T.L. and Ph.D.) and holds a M.D. from the University of Bologna and an S.T.D. from the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Southern Italy in Naples. At Boston College, prof. Vicini was Gasson Professor and taught as the School of Theology and Ministry. He also taught in Italy, Albania, Mexico, Chad, and France. He is co-chair of the international network Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, as well as lecturer and member of associations of moral theologians and bioethicists in Italy, Europe, and the U.S. His research interest and publication include theological bioethics, global public health, new biotechnologies, environmental issues, and fundamental theological ethics.

Prof. Amy Boesky

Prof. Amy Boesky

At Boston College, Amy Boesky is Chair of the English Department and directs the minor in Medical Humanities, Health, and Culture. Trained in early modern literature, she regularly teaches courses on early representations of self, body, and biomedical culture. Together with her creative nonfiction, she is author of a memoir on her family’s experience with hereditary cancers, titled What We Have, she is also editor of The Story Within, a collection of personal essays on genetics and identity. Her new work focuses on narrative medicine and personal writing about breast cancer, from the early modern period to the present.