Posted by William Nunnelley on 2004-04-01

Samford University will award Pellegrino Medals to a trio of leaders in healthcare ethics and care for the aging who will speak during its annual Healthcare Ethics and Law (HEAL) Institute Conference Friday, April 16.

Pellegrino Medal recipients will be Dr. Tom L. Beauchamp, professor of philosophy and senior research scholar in Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics; Dr. James F. Childress, Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and professor of medical education at the University of Virginia; and Dr. Linda L. Emanuel, the Buehler Professor of Medicine and director of the Buehler Center on Aging at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Samford's McWhorter School of Pharmacy sponsors the annual HEAL Institute Conference. The theme of this year's program at Bruno Conference Center of Saint Vincent's Hospital is "Working Toward Improving the Quality of End-of-Life Care."

The conference is designed primarily to help Alabama healthcare organizational ethics committees of all levels with some of today's most pressing healthcare ethics and law issues and problems.

Pellegrino Medals are awarded to individuals recognized nationally as leaders "for contributions to heathcare ethics in the selfless spirit of Edmund D. Pellegrino," who in 1998 received the first lifetime achievement award granted by the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. At that presentation, he was called the "father of the American bioethics movement."

Dr. Beauchamp joined the Georgetown Philosophy Department in 1970 after completing the Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. He accepted a joint appointment at the Kennedy Institute in the mid-1970s. In 1976, he joined the staff of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

Dr. Childress directs the Institute for Practical Ethics at Virginia. He has been vice chair of the National Task Force on Organ Transplantation and served on the Board of Directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing. He was a member of the presidentially-appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission from 1996 until 2001.

Dr. Emanuel is the founder and principal of the national Education for Physicians in End-of-life Care (EPEC) Project. Before joining Northwestern, she was vice president of ethics and standards and head of the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. Until 1996, she was the assistant director, Division of Medical Ethics, and until 1998 the Glessner Lee Associate Professor of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School.

 

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 5,791 students from 49 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.