About the Center for Bioethics

The Bioethics Center at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics develops tools for clinicians and teachers to help analyze ethical issues that arise in pediatrics.

For a variety of bioethics topics, we offer a brief introduction to the ethical issues, power point presentations to use in your teaching, interviews with leading figures in the field about those issues, and annotated list of references. We provide links to full-text reference material that is in the public domain. For other reference material, we provide links to the abstracts.

If you have an issue that you'd like us to address, or feedback on the materials we've developed, please contact us. All of the original materials can be used without permission. Please give us credit, though, and send colleagues our way.

Pediatric Bioethics Certificate Program

The 2012-2013 Children's Mercy Bioethics Center Certificate Program concluded on May and 9, with students presenting their individual projects and receiving their Pediatric Bioethics Certificate. Nationally known ethics figures and Bioethics Center Advisory Board members, Ellen Wright Clayton from Vanderbilt and Norm Fost from the University of Wisconsin, also attended the two-day conclusion.  The nine-month course began Sept. 7 with an intensive three-day weekend on site in Kansas City. For the rest of the year, students and faculty discussed assigned readings on-line and in periodic conference calls and webinars.

The 2013-2014 certificate is currently considering student applications for the upcoming year, which begins September 20-22, 2013.  For additional information on the 2013-2014 certificate course, please e-mail either Vanessa Watkins, vswatkins@cmh.edu, or the Bioethics Center, cmbc@cmh.edu. Registrants are now being placed on a waiting list.