Our Center interprets bioethics as a broad domain of questions about ethical issues in the life sciences and health care and draws upon a wide variety of disciplines.
After graduating with my PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology, I searched for opportunities to better understand the intersections of science with society. The perfect position arose as a joint postdoc between three incredible UNC programs: the Center for Bioethics, the Program in Precision Medicine and Healthcare, and the ELSI@UNC Center. As a PhD student, …
The PREPARE (PRomoting Equity for Pregnant Adolescents in REsearch) project has seen exciting activity recently, with its team sharing work through several posters and presentations. We showcased three posters at the International Workshop on Pediatrics & HIV, followed by both a poster and an oral presentation at the International AIDS Conference (IAS). We’re also presenting …
Jill Fisher was awarded a Spring 2025 Making a Difference Grant from The Greenwall Foundation for her project “Challenging Fear of Anaphylaxis: An Ethical Framework for Implementing Oral Food Challenges in Allergy Clinical Practice.” Fisher said, “There is a real-world need for practical solutions to bioethics dilemmas in pediatric food allergy, and this study will …
The PREPARE (PRomoting Equity for Pregnant Adolescents in REsearch) study team had the exciting opportunity to showcase their work at the 2nd African Workshop on Women and HIV, in Nairobi, Kenya. The team presented two research posters that highlighted key study findings. The first poster focused on the team’s innovative approach of engaging Youth Advisory Boards …
Bioethics from the Global South Bioethics from the Global South was published in mid-January 2025 by Springer. The editors, Lillian Omutoko and Walter Jaoko, are graduates of the Advancing Research Ethics in Southern Africa (ARESA) program, an NIH-funded master’s program collaboratively run by the Division of Medical Ethics and Law at Stellenbosch University and the UNC …
Since the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 18 states have put functional abortion bans in place. New research fills a gap in understanding impacts on physicians after these bans. Mara Buchbinder, Kavita S. Arora and colleagues identify sources of moral distress impacting physicians. Moral distress occurs when …
Jill Fisher and Torin Monahan are working to combat a longtime issue in higher education by unveiling which universities provide the best support for academic couples. Nearly a third of researchers have a partner who also works in academia. It’s a common occurrence, but sometimes the toll it takes on the people affected by the …
The PREPARE (PRomoting Equity for Pregnant Adolescents in REsearch) research team participated in AIDS 2024, the 25th Annual AIDS Conference sponsored by the International AIDS Society in Munich, Germany. A day prior to the conference the PREPARE team convened the first meeting of the PREPARE Working Group for a half-day workshop. Members of the PREPARE working group …
To raise awareness and assist couples with job searches, UNC-Chapel Hill researchers launched an evidence-based tool showing how research-intensive institutions rank in partner hiring – providing insights on where they may be excelling and where they may be deficient. Jill Fisher, PhD, professor of social medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, co-led the project.
Members of the PRomoting Equity for Pregnant Adolescents in Research (PREPARE) team recently returned from a trip to Botswana and Malawi. This study is led by Principal Investigators (PI) Anne Lyerly, MD, MA, and Kristen Sullivan, PhD, MSW, MBA, of the UNC Center for Bioethics, and includes several UNC Bioethics faculty. While overseas, the PREPARE …
UNC Center for Bioethics core faculty member Jean Cadigan, Ph.D., along with a multidisciplinary team of researchers from across the country, was recently awarded an R01 grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH entitled, Beyond the Medical: The ELSI of Polygenic Scores for Social Traits.
Annie Lyerly and Kristen Sullivan have been awarded an R01 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to develop empirically informed guidance for conducting ethically responsible HIV/co-infections research with pregnant adolescents. Pregnant adolescents face synergistic challenges in the context of HIV – heightened risk of maternal infection, vertical transmission, and maternal and …
Mara Buchbinder has launched the Study to Examine Physicians’ Pandemic Stress (STEPPS) with funding from the Greenwall Foundation and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified ongoing stress, overwork, and disillusionment among the healthcare workforce. Healthcare professionals responding to the pandemic are experiencing crises of moral integrity and personal …
The Research for Ethical Data Science in Southern Africa (REDSSA) project has the overall aims of producing new knowledge regarding the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of conducting data science research to develop evidence-based, context specific guidance for the conduct and governance of data science initiatives such as DS-I Africa, and to strengthen the …
With funding from the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Jill Fisher is conducting a research study on pediatric clinical trials for food allergies, focusing primarily on peanut allergy. Using ethnographic research methods, the project investigates the on-the-ground ethical challenges that emerge in these clinical trials. In particular, the project explores how …
The increasing pace and international diffusion of developments in human genome editing research have prompted ongoing efforts to develop responsible governance for such research. One point of broad agreement across these efforts is that human genome editing research should prioritize medical applications over attempts to enhance human traits because of the moral concerns the latter …
Comparative Research Ethics and Policy for Phase I Trials Principal Investigators: Jill A. Fisher and Rebecca L. Walker This project addresses the need for a novel evidence-based approach to the protection of Phase I healthy volunteers. Phase I clinical trials test the safety of investigational drugs that eventually may be used in affected patients. These trials …
Despite the high social value of adolescent HIV prevention research in sub-Saharan Africa, investigators are reluctant to involve adolescents in studies with HIV testing and disclosure of results because of ethical concerns about the risks of their participation. This study examines four inter-related ethical issues essential to adolescent HIV research: the effects of disclosure of …
A better understanding of acute HIV infection is essential to public health, impacting both HIV transmission and potential advances in HIV cure clinical research. Acute HIV infection refers to the earliest stages of HIV infection, the short window of time right after a person becomes infected when they are most infectious. Individuals diagnosed and treated …
Project Description Re-Engaging Ethics is a project that is funded by the Greenwall Foundation. The purpose of this project is to create and disseminate recommendations for the review and conduct of community-engaged research, by engaging a diverse set of stakeholders in dialogue about the unique ethical concerns that arise in this emerging scientific approach to …
Francophone African countries are among the most resource-constrained in the world. Citizens in these regions commonly struggle with a wide variety of health problems related to poverty, political conflict and social upheaval. Those involved in local efforts to improve health, in clinical medicine, biomedical research or public health initiatives, often find themselves in difficult situations …
Each year, hundreds of thousands of pregnant women in the US face significant medical illness during their pregnancies, and many more do so worldwide. Diabetes and hypertension complicate 40,000+ pregnancies; psychiatric illness complicates an estimated 500,000; cancer and autoimmune diseases are not uncommon. Yet we have surprisingly little data about how to safely and …
Principal Investigator: Rebecca L. Walker The aim of this project is to develop a virtue ethical approach to biomedical animal research science. A virtue ethical approach to animal research has not yet been developed but the promise of this framework in addressing ethical issues arising within the practice of animal research is significant. In addition, …
Social and Ethical Aspects of Research on Curing HIV A Working Group Co-Principle Investigators: Stuart Rennie Joseph Tucker One of the defining qualities of living with HIV has been that it is incurable, and this tenet has powerfully formed and disrupted individual, organizational, and institutional identities. But recent medical advances have contested this basic fact, …
Principle Investigator: Jill Fisher This project investigates healthy volunteers’ patterns of participation in Phase I clinical trials, with particular attention to the differences among minority groups. The majority of healthy volunteers in clinical trials are serial participants, meaning that they enroll repeatedly in studies, so the research has a longitudinal design to understand volunteers’ patterns …
ARESA Co-Principal Investigators: Keymanthri Moodley (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa) Stuart Rennie (UNC) A collaboration between C:B Core Faculty member Stuart Rennie and colleagues at Stellenbosch University in South Africa has been awarded a grant from the Fogarty International Center of NIH to support research ethics education inSouthern Africa. The Advancing Research Ethics training in Southern …
Co-Principal Investigators Eric Juengst (UNC) Jennifer Fishman (McGill University) Richard Settersten (Oregon State University) “Personalized Genomic Medicine” (PGM) has become a banner which unites a very wide array of scientific, clinical, and commercial initiatives, from medical sequencing and pharmacogenomics research to medical school curricula, public health interventions, nutritional regimes, and direct-to-consumer “recreational” genome scanning. Across …
