BRC Executive Director Welcome

Welcome to the website of the Bioethics Research Center (BRC)! Our faculty, fellows, and staff are social scientists and clinical investigators who study ethical, social, and professional issues that affect patients, researchers, and health care providers. We aim to do research that:

• Addresses urgent ethical and social issues
• Informs solutions to real-world problems
• Is innovative and rigorous in its methods

Because our research is practical and addresses timely issues, it informs all our other activities, including education, consultations, and testing services.

We also aim to be a wonderful place to work. We are intentional in how we train people, in scheduling social time together, in communicating our core values, and in supporting people as they juggle their life commitments. We are also serious about increasing our diversity—we have made advances over the past two years and are taking steps to advance further.

For those who are interested, here’s a brief overview of the history of the BRC

The BRC originated as two entities.

In 2007, we established the Center for Clinical Research Ethics (CCRE)—an NIH CTSA-funded core that supported the Washington University Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. The CCRE offered scholars in the ICTS educational programming in clinical research ethics and the responsible conduct of research. It also offered consultations on ethical issues in clinical and translation research. I directed the CCRE through a subaward to Saint Louis University, where I was faculty.

In 2014, I moved to Washington University and established the Professional and Social Issues (PSI) Lab, quickly hiring Dr. Alison Antes as a collaborator. The PSI Lab conducted funded research on research integrity, outcomes of ethics education, and factors that influence ethical and professional behavior among physicians and researchers.

As the lab grew—and co-investigators started writing their own grants—we expanded the focus of our research and the number of principal investigators.

In 2018, we merged the CCRE and PSI Lab to create the Bioethics Research Center (BRC). We continue to serve the ICTS as a core and continue to function as a highly collaborative research lab with multiple principal investigators and research specializations.

In a relatively short period of time, we have grown from one faculty member to five with approximately 20 staff, fellows, and students working in the Center. Approximately 96% of our funding comes from external grants. The number of issues that we engage has also grown tremendously. Please visit our Projects page to learn more about our work.

A Special Thank You!

The BRC would not be what it is today without the kind support of many people.

We thank Dr. Steven J. Bander for endowing a professorship in “Medical Ethics and Professionalism” in the Department of Medicine. He has also made several seed gifts that helped to launch major initiatives, including the journal Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and two R01 projects.

We thank Dr. David Bisno for establishing a fund that supports some of our efforts in healthcare ethics education.

We thank Drs. Victoria Fraser and Bradley Evanoff, our Department Chair and Division Director respectively, for providing me with a startup package, encouraging innovation, and providing the administrative infrastructure needed to run a successful program.

Finally, we thank the U.S. taxpayers and legislators who provide the National Institutes of Health—our biggest funder—with the revenue it needs to carry out its mission of improving the health of the nation.