Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster
Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster Fall 2024
Building on the prior two years of research on the relationship between healthcare and moral and political concepts like compassion and responsibility, this year the DCIl research cluster "Healthcare and the Health of the Public,” is pleased to convene a series of public lectures and workshops on the topic of the physician/patient relationship. SMU has been an important home for research on this topic for at least two generations, going back to the work of the inaugural Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, William F. May.
In the fall, we’ll focus on three models—the patient-as-citizen, the patient-as-consumer, and the physician-as-innovator—and the social and political implications of those models. In the spring, we will consider how, if at all, the emergence of generative AI in the clinical setting impacts these and other models.
Fall 2024 Meeting Schedule
All meetings will be held in Kirby Parlor beginning at 5:00 pm
Tuesday, September 24: Patient-as-Citizen
Lecturer: Dallas Gingles, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Practice in Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Perkins School of Theology, and Co-Convener of the "Healthcare and the Health of the Public” Research Cluster at Southern Methodist University
Monday, October 14: Patient-as-Consumer, Physician-as-Provider
Lecturer: Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Faith and Learning, Associate Professor of Ethics, Faith & Culture, Truett Theological Seminary, and Affiliate Professor of Management, Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University
Tuesday, October 29: The Physician as Innovator? Examining Professional Identity and Practice Amidst Technological Advances
Lecturer: Ashley Moyse, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Director of Columbia Character Cooperatives at Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons
Conveners
Rita Kirk
Dr. Kirk is the William F. May Endowed Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and professor of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs. Her passions for aligning resources with innovation, empowering ideas, and building coalitions in order to successfully implement strategic initiatives are hallmarks of her work.
Dallas Gingles
Robin Lovin
More Information About Healthcare and Human Flourishing
Healthcare and the Health of the Public 2023-2024
The DCII discussion group on “Healthcare and Human Flourishing” continued to explore the value propositions of our social institutions, which began during Spring 2023. As with last year’s sessions on compassion and healthcare, these interdisciplinary discussions considered the interaction between essential social institutions, basic moral ideas, and the larger society that supported these essential functions and advanced or limited their moral aspirations. To reflect this emphasis, the group was renamed “Healthcare and the Health of the Public.”
The discussion last year focused on healthcare practices and institutions, drawing on Joshua Hordern’s book Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life. This text allowed participants to consider the different ways that societies designed their healthcare systems to strike a balance between the systemic requirements of modern medicine, the value of compassion, and the political and social principles on which society was organized.
The group continued thinking about healthcare in 2024 but also welcomed reflections on the relations between human flourishing and other disciplines, including law, business, and – certainly relevant to the context – higher education. To go beyond the focus on compassion, the consideration expanded to include the values and virtues of responsibility and hope.
Toward these goals, participants were requested to read and consider two books, both of which were provided free of charge to the first 20 participants:
– Wendy Brown, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values). Harvard University Press, 2023.
– Michael Lamb, A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Participants were asked to email the Maguire Ethics Center to confirm their attendance and schedule a time to pick up their books.
These two works by distinguished contemporary scholars provided a thoughtful introduction to the modern and resolutely secular thoughts of Max Weber, and to Augustine’s classical and Christian reflections on virtue. Together, authors Brown and Lamb helped participants to read two authors who were highly influential in their own troubled times and relate those observations to the questions of society today. The group hoped to continue exploring the connections between the social institutions essential to human flourishing, the values and virtues those institutions required, and how these disciplinary requirements could be integrated into the structures of society as a whole.
The meeting format this semester was slightly different than last year. Each of the four sessions met at 4:00 pm for wine and light refreshments, after which Dr. Robin Lovin gave a lecture focused on the social theory that made virtues like responsibility and hope intelligible to -- and influential for -- flourishing modern societies. There was plenty of time for discussion and Q&A after the lectures, and the meetings concluded by 5:30 pm, after which there was time for additional informal discussion. All meetings took place in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, room 220.
The meeting schedule was as follows:
–Tuesday, February 6th – Discussion of part one of Nihilistic Times. Dr. Robin Lovin provided an introduction to the book and the discussion.
–Tuesday, March 5th – Lecture on Marx and Durkheim.
–Tuesday, April 2nd – Lecture on Weber.
–Tuesday, April 30th – Synthetic/Constructive Lecture.
Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster
On April 3, 2023 the Healthcare and the Health of the Public SMU DCII Research Cluster welcomed Joshua Hordern, Ph.D. to SMU to speak on the intersection of healthcare, theology and political philosophy.
Dr. Hordern talked to the group about how individuals in healthcare are forced to reckon with very basic questions about the good. What is a human? How does our account of human dignity fit into our overall understanding of the universe (is it a dignity that stands out in relief against the canvas of an infinite and meaningless universe; is it a dignity that is perfectly integrated into a meaningful universe that is created and loved by God?). It is in these institutions that we are required to be honest about the beliefs we hold most deeply even when—or especially because—we are committed to cordoning off some of these beliefs in our official political life, in order to build and maintain the conditions for a reasonable and just pluralistic constitutional democracy.
Keynote Speaker: Rev. Prof. Joshua Hordern
Joshua Hordern is Professor of Christian Ethics in the Faculty of Theology and Religion and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford. He is also an ordained minister in the Church of England. He has worked extensively with colleagues in healthcare on themes such as compassion in healthcare, medical professionalism, vaccine hesitancy and precision medicine. Publications include Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Advancing Medical Professionalism (Royal College of Physicians, 2018).
About Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life
Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life gives an account of the nature and content of compassion and its role in healthcare. The argument considers how and why contested beliefs about political life, suffering, the human condition, time, and responsibility make a difference to ‘compassion’. While compassion appears to be a straightforward aspect of life and practice, the appearance is deceptive. Compassion is plagued by both conceptual and practical ills and needs some quite specific kinds of therapy. The first step therefore is to diagnose precisely what is wrong with ‘compassion’ including its debilitating political entanglements, the vagueness of its meaning and the risk of burn-out it threatens. With diagnosis in hand, three therapies are prescribed for compassion’s ills: (i) an understanding of patients and healthcare workers as those who pass through the life-course, encountering each other as wayfarers and pilgrims; (ii) a grasp of the nature of compassion in healthcare; and (iii) an embedding of healthcare within the realities of civic life. With this therapy applied, the argument shows how compassionate relationships acquire their content in healthcare practice. First, the form that compassion takes is shown to depend on how different doctrines of time, tragedy, salvation, responsibility, fault, and theodicy set the terms of people’s lives and relationships. Second, how such compassion matters to practice and policy is worked out in the detail of healthcare professionalism, marketisation, and technology, drawing on the author’s collaborations. Covering everything from conception to old age, and from machine learning to religious diversity, this book draws on philosophy, theology, and everyday experience to stretch the imagination of what compassion might mean in healthcare practice.
Interested in working with the Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster?
The Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster is open to participants from any and all disciplines and departments at SMU and also welcomes participants from other universities and the broader DFW community. Email Maguire Ethics Center program coordinator Rylee Bailey at rbbailey@smu.edu or call the Ethics Center at 214-768-4255 to learn more about how you can get involved!
Check the Ethics Center's website periodically for updates regarding Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster events and meetings.