Hastings Center Collaboration
Health Care Reform: The State of the Debate
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An Invitation to Yale Faculty Members and Graduate Students
from The Hastings Center
The Hastings Center and Yale University have established the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy. It is meant to provide mutual assistance and a variety of research and visiting scholar programs. I am writing now to invite Yale faculty members to take advantage of two features of the program, reciprocal library privileges and participation in the visiting scholar program.
The Robert S. Morison Library
The Morison Library at The Hastings Center has a collection of some 8500 books in the area of bioethics, medical ethics, and health policy. It is one of the strongest collections in the country. The library is available for those who would like to come to the Center to make use of it. It is also available for the lending of books to Yale faculty members. For information on the holdings of the library, go to our website: http://library.thehastingscenter.org. If you would like us to loan you a book, please contact Karen Shea, Library Manager, 845-424-4040, ext.25, or Sheak@thehastingscenter.org.
Visiting Scholar & Visiting Program
The Hastings Center has a Visiting Scholar program and a Visitors Program. The Visiting Scholar program is available for stays at the Center from 1-8 weeks. The Visitors Program is for those who want to spend just a few days at the Center. The Center will make its apartments available free to faculty members for both long and short stays.
The Center is located at a particularly lovely spot on the Hudson River, directly across the river from West Point. Nearby are some charming towns, many hiking trails and some museums. Those who come as individuals will share a kitchen and living room with other visitors. One of the apartments is suitable for a couple, with its own kitchen, and with room for at least one small child.
If a couple would, like say, to spend a weekend at the Center, that would be fine, but with one proviso: either on a Friday or a Monday spend some time with the staff and tell us about your work. Whether for a short or long stay, we ask everyone to fill out an application form, mainly to allow us to allocate the apartment space efficiently. If you are interested in a short or long stay, please contact: Erika Blacksher (845-424-4040, x257) or Blackshere@thehastingscenter.org.
Further information on The Hastings Center can be had at: www.thehastingscenter.org.
Daniel Callahan
Co-Director
Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy
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PRESS RELEASE
Yale University and Hastings Center
Create Joint Bioethics and Health Policy Program
New Haven, Conn. —Yale University and the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institute based in Garrison, NY, have announced the establishment of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy.
David H. Smith, director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and Daniel Callahan, Hastings Center co-founder, formalized the commitment to strengthen ties between the two institutions at a ceremony at Yale on January 16. The collaboration is designed to increase the range, depth and impact of both bioethics programs in the teaching, research and understanding of the field. Smith and Callahan are co-directors of the joint program, and both are Yale alumni. Smith earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1964; Callahan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College in 1952.
One highlight of the new collaboration is the inclusion of Yale faculty on Hastings Center projects, and Hastings scholars on Yale projects as well as the development of new joint projects. The program allows for an annual scholarly exchange of library privileges between Yale’s library system and the Robert Morison Library at the Hastings Center, joint hosting of visiting scholars and jointly-sponsored student programs.
The Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy will hold an inaugural public event on health care reform at Yale on April 28.
“The University has been extremely fortunate to call upon the leadership of individuals like David Smith and Dan Callahan to transform bioethics at Yale from an exciting vision to a vibrant reality. Collaboration with a distinguished and accomplished partner like the Hastings Center promises to expand our vision and to broaden our impact on bioethical issues and discourse within the University community and beyond,” said Stephanie Spangler, deputy provost for biomedical and health affairs.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for Yale’s Bioethics Center,” Smith said. “The Hastings Center has an unrivaled track record and an extraordinary range of contacts around the world. We will benefit from all that and help to make an important contribution in the years ahead.”
"Collaboration between the Hastings Center and Yale's bioethics community brings together two very strong groups of ethicists and policy analysts, forming one of the most impressive bioethics programs anywhere,” said Don Green, director of Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), and the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Political Science. The Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics is an entity within the ISPS.
Founded as a committee in 1997 and granted Center status in 2005, Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics engages students and faculty in discussion about the “social and political responses to science and technology that have greatly improved life for many people but made life worse for others, and rendered our collective survival as a species problematical," said Smith. Supported in part by the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation, scholars at the Bioethics Center study the ethical and social implications of biomedical and technological research, with a strong focus on religion and the environment as well as on care for the dying, aging and risk assessment. The Center draws on many of Yale’s resources, including its students and faculty, libraries and schools of Medicine, Divinity, Law and Forestry and Environmental Studies.
The Hastings Center, founded in 1969, was the world’s first bioethics research institute. Non-partisan and not-for-profit, the Hastings Center has a robust research program, with federally and privately funded grants supporting projects examining the impact of advances in medicine and the life sciences on individuals, families and communities. In addition to the New York facilities, the Hastings Center has a satellite office in Washington, DC.
Current projects include looking at the use of psychiatric medication in children, the role of medical technology in rising health care costs, sports enhancement and synthetic biology. Thanks to generous support from the Ford Foundation, the Center in 2007 established a strong public affairs arm to enhance its reach to journalists, policymakers and the public. As part of this effort, “From Birth to Death and Bench to Bedside: The Hastings Center’s Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists and Policymakers” is available free on the Center’s website.
“At a time when bioethics has more relevance than ever, the Hastings Center welcomes the opportunity to work closely with our colleagues at Yale to develop new knowledge and new insights,” said Thomas H. Murray, president of the Hastings Center.
“I could hardly have imagined when I entered Yale as a freshman that I would be coming back many years later for a whole new relationship,” Callahan said. “Nor could I have guessed it would be in a field that did not even exist when I was a student. It is exciting and stimulating, and a wonderful opportunity for the Center.”
PRESS CONTACT: Gila Reinstein
203 432 1325 gila.reinstein@yale.edu
