Who We Are

A collaborative intellectual space for addressing ethical, social, and policy issues of importance for biotechnology, health care, biomedical research, and public health.

About us

The Wake Forest University Center for Bioethics, Health, and Society is a collaborative intellectual space for addressing ethical, social, and policy issues of importance for biotechnology, health care, biomedical research, and public health. The Center brings together faculty, students, and staff from all disciplines across all WFU campuses and schools, and engages academic and public stakeholders locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally to advance research, education, and communication about bioethics issues.

Our Faculty & Staff

Bioethics is both a theoretical enterprise and a practical competence. It is fundamentally multidisciplinary, addressing universal questions within the social and cultural contexts in which they arise. The Center for Bioethics, Health and Society encompasses all aspects of bioethics research and scholarship, from theory to policy to practice, and all relevant disciplines, including philosophy and religion, the life sciences, the social sciences, health economics, medical humanities and arts, and the professions (law, medicine, business, and divinity).

Bioethics@Wake Forest External Advisory Board

Our Mission

To create a shared intellectual environment, encompassing cross-disciplinary research, scholarship, policy, teaching, and practice, that:

Promotes bioethics as integral to research, scholarship, and practice in the health professions, the life sciences, and scientific and health-related research.
Supports scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and industry in the creation of ethically sound policy for health care, public health, and research.
Facilitates the identification of new multi-disciplinary collaborative research efforts reflecting technological advances and stakeholder interests.
Communicates scholarly work and research findings to stakeholders and the public in ways that promote community understanding and engagement.

Our Vision

As a premier academic center for education and research in the health sciences and a university with a strong sense of ethics and public mission, Wake Forest University has a responsibility to help ensure that health care providers and students, scientific researchers, policymakers, business leaders, and citizens are able to understand and address the ethical challenges arising in health care access and delivery, health policy formulation, and scientific innovation.

The Center for Bioethics, Health & Society is a resource for the University and the region, and a nexus for productive nationwide and international dialogue and collaboration that incorporates bioethics into new and ongoing research, teaching, policy, practice, as well as business and biotechnology development.