Debbie Brady, LCSW, ACSW
Debbie Brady, LCSW, ACSW, is a social worker at the UAMS Thomas and Lyon Longevity Clinic, where she works with geriatric patients and their families to maximize health care experiences, quality of life, safety, and behavioral health. She is a member of the hospital Ethics Committee and Patient Advisory Council. Previously, she worked at Arkansas Children’s Hospital as Assistant Director of Social Work, Interpreters and Family Services, and also served on the boards of the National Kidney Foundation’s Council of Nephrology Social Workers and the National Kidney Foundation of Arkansas. Debbie earned her Master’s Degree in Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. She has extensive experience conducting workshops for physicians, nurses, social workers, other healthcare professionals, patients, and caregivers.
Ariel Clatty, Ph.D.
Dr. Ariel Clatty received her doctorate in healthcare ethics from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA in 2017. Alongside finishing her doctorate she was accepted into the Cleveland Clinic Ethics Immersion Program where she studied clinical ethics consultations while shadowing their bioethicists. Since then, she has been a medical ethicist at UPMC where she has developed nursing ethics sub-committees, ethics and patient safety lunch and learns, and other immersive ethics programs that have been recognized nationally by MAGNET as exemplars in ethics. She also continues to publish work in addiction medicine, culture of ethics, moral distress, and vulnerable populations within ethics.
Arlene Davis, J.D.
Arlene M. Davis is an attorney and Professor of Social Medicine, as well as Director of the UNC Center for Bioethics. She is also a member of the North Carolina State Bar. Davis’s work focuses on practical ethics in both clinical and research settings, drawing upon her prior experience in private practice and in pediatric, psychiatric, and public health nursing. Within the School of Medicine and elsewhere, Davis teaches on topics related to ethics and to health law. She is an active member of the UNC Academy of Educators and serves on educational committees within the School of Medicine. In UNC Hospitals, she co-chairs the Hospital Ethics Committee. As Director of UNC Hospitals’ Clinical Ethics Service, she conducts or supervises ethics consultation for patients throughout the quaternary hospital system, offers educational programs for GME and hospital staff, and helps develop policy guidance at the intersections of law and ethics.
Beth Epstein, Ph.D., RN, HEC-C, FAAN
Beth Epstein is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Programs in the University of Virginia School of Nursing. Dr. Epstein is recognized nationally and internationally for her work in bioethics, particularly moral distress. She teaches ethics and pharmacology in the School of Nursing, is a core member of the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, and an affiliate faculty member of the UVA Jewish Studies Department. She directs the UVA Health System’s moral distress consult service, a hospital-wide intervention to address moral distress, and is a member of the ethics consult service. Along with colleagues from 6 healthcare organizations across the country, Dr. Epstein launched the Moral Distress Consultation Collaborative in 2020 with the purpose of furthering research in moral distress and ethics and developing best practices for moral distress consultation. Dr. Epstein has served on the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Board of Directors for several years and is currently serving as Secretary.
Rebecca Greenberg, RN, Ph.D.
Dr. Rebecca Greenberg is the Senior Bioethicist at Sinai Health in Toronto, Canada. She is an Associate Professor in the Department Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and a Bioethicist member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics, at the University of Toronto. Rebecca specializes in bioethics pertaining to paediatrics and women’s health. Previously, she worked as a Bioethicist at The Hospital for Sick Children. She is a member of the Bioethics Committees for the Canadian Paediatirc Society and the Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada. Rebecca has contributed to the academic discourse of paediatric bioethics as she has authored many journal articles, book chapters and edited a book. Her main research interests include moral distress, moral resilience, ethics education and priority setting. She is the recipient of a number of grants, including operating grants from the Canadian Institute of Health Research pertaining to moral distress and resiliency.
Laura Guidry-Grimes, Ph.D.
Laura Guidry-Grimes was recently Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), serving as a clinical ethicist for UAMS Health and Arkansas Children’s Hospital. She is moving into a position with Cleveland Clinic as an Associate Staff Ethicist. She has led policy development and review for ethics committees for over six years. Her research focuses on disability bioethics, psychiatric ethics, and vulnerability in clinical settings. She co-authored Basics of Bioethics, Fourth Edition (Routledge, 2020) with Robert M. Veatch. She co-edited Moral Expertise: New Essays from Theoretical and Clinical Bioethics (Springer, 2018) with Jamie Carlin Watson and Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World (Springer, 2021) with Elizabeth Victor.
D. Micah Hester, Ph.D., HEC-C
D. Micah Hester is Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics and Professor of Medical Humanities and Pediatrics at UAMS, as well as clinical ethicist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH). Dr. Hester has published nine books and numerous journal articles. Trained in philosophy with a focus on American pragmatism, Some of Dr. Hester’s publications can be found in leading bioethics journals, such as the American Journal of Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and the Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. He also is regularly invited to give talks on bioethical topics throughout Arkansas, the Mid-South, nationally, and internationally. Dr. Hester has been on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities as well as the Association of Bioethics Program Directors.
Megan Prescott, LCSW, HEC-C
Megan Prescott is a clinical social worker for the Palliative Care Consult Service at University of Colorado Hospital’s Denver Metro Campus. Prior to her work in Palliative Care, she was an active member of the nephrology community for over 16 years. In addition to her work in dialysis, she served on various national and local council positions, and was honored twice with the “Social Worker of the Year” award from the National Kidney Foundation of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming. In 2012, she was named “One of the 100 most influential and innovative clinicians in nephrology patient care” by The Medical Education Institute. Megan is also a Lead Consultant for the Ethics Consult Service at UCH. A longtime member of the UCH Ethics Committee, she joined the Ethics Consultation Team in 2013, expanding to her current role in early 2016. She earned Healthcare Ethics Consultant (HEC-C) certification in 2018. Megan has published articles in several industry journals and has lectured around the country on a variety of topics. Among her favorites are the complexities of caring for patients with challenging behavior, resolving conflict and ethical quandaries, and moral distress. In 2021, Megan designed and implemented the Moral Resilience Program, a longitudinal, experiential, asynchronous course to build understanding of the complex phenomenon of Moral Distress and effective strategies to mitigate these challenging experiences. Graduates of the program are prepared to serve as a resource to their units and teams as members of the Moral Resilience Council.
Jessica Roumillat, MSSA, M.A., LCSW, HEC-C
Jessica Roumillat is the Program Manager for Integrated Ethics with RISE (Resilience, Integrated Ethics, Staff Support, Engagement) at Children’s Health in Dallas, TX. Jessica holds master’s degrees in social work and bioethics, and she was a clinical social worker in pediatric critical care, cardiology, and solid organ transplant prior to transitioning into her current role. As the Program Manager for Integrated Ethics Jessica educates and manages a cohort of clinical and non-clinical team members from across the organization that volunteer their time to support staff as they navigate moral distress, clinical conflict, and caregiver grief. Additionally, Jessica leads the Children’s Health Ethics Consultation Service, serves as a co-chair of the Children’s Health Ethics Committee, and chairs the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas Schwartz Center Rounds Planning Committee. Jessica is grateful for the opportunity to do such meaningful work alongside talented and compassionate colleagues, including a very special furry co-worker named Badger! Badger joined the Children’s Health team through the organization’s facility dog program in March of 2016 with Jessica as his primary handler. Over the past six years Badger has positively impacted the lives of countless patients and families, and through his work with RISE has made a remarkable difference in team member engagement with support.
Hillary D. Villarreal, Ph.Dc.
In 2015, Hillary completed a B.A. in Medical Humanities at Baylor University. She then began an M.A. program in Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine. At CWRU, she served as a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Bioethics piloting an undergraduate seminar course on medical humanities. In the Fall of 2018, Hillary began the Ph.D. program in Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University and her work as a Graduate Assistant. Her responsibilities included acting as Assistant Conference Coordinator for the Integrity of Creation Conference, managing class websites and communication, and helping redesign the clinical rotation courses in alignment with the new Healthcare Ethics Certification exam. During this time, she also served as an Extern in the Medical Ethics Department at UPMC where she assisted with writing consult notes and providing continuing education for ethics committees. She plans to pursue careers as both a clinical ethicist and as a university professor, helping train future healthcare professionals in ethics. Her research interests include clinical ethics, transplant ethics, moral distress, and ethics culture.
Jamie Carlin Watson, Ph.D., HEC-C
Jamie Carlin Watson, PhD, HEC-C was most recently Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock with a secondary appointment in Neurology and an affiliated position with the UAMS Center for Health Literacy. He also served as a clinical ethicist at UAMS Health and Arkansas Children’s Hospital. He is transitioning to Associate Clinical Ethicist at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH. His primary research is in social epistemology and bioethics, and it includes expertise, moral expertise, and moral distress. He also works on broader issues in medical humanities, including health literacy and literature and medicine. His books include Winning Votes by Abusing Reason: Responsible Belief and Political Rhetoric (Lexington, 2017), Moral Expertise: New Essays from Theoretical and Clinical Bioethics with Laura Guidry-Grimes (Springer, 2018), Expertise: A Philosophical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2021), and A History and Philosophy of Expertise (Bloomsbury, 2022).