Scott Halpern and Jennifer J. Prah, LDI Senior Fellows and Perelman School of Medicine professors whose research is heavily involved with health care-related ethical issues, have been named Hastings Center Fellows. 

The 50-year-old Hastings Center is a bioethics research institute that has played a leading role in establishing the field of bioethics and informing public policy decisions related to health care, science and environmental issues. It publishes the journals Ethics & Human Research and The Hastings Report.

Halpern, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine; of Epidemiology; and of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School. He is the founding Director of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, and Director of the NIA-funded Penn Roybal P30 Center on Palliative Care in Dementia.

Health Equity and Policy Lab

Prah, PhD, MSc, MA, MSL, is a Professor of both Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Perelman, and of Health Equity, Economics, and Policy at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice. She is founder and director of the Health Equity and Policy Lab, which conducts quantitative and qualitative research on the equity implications of health and social policies.

Halpern and Prah were two of the 14 new fellows elected to Hastings Fellowships on December 4. 

The announcement from Hastings Center President Millie Solomon, EdD, welcomed the two into a community of more than 200 individuals distinguished by their “uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center — how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties, and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world.”

Other Hastings Fellows from Penn

Other Penn faculty members who are Hastings Center Fellows are Anita L. Allen, JD, PhD; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD; Martha J. Farah, PhD; Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH (CHOP); Amy Gutmann, PhD; Steven Joffe, MD; Jason Karlawish, MD; Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD; and Dorothy  Roberts, JD.