BENO 2025 Conference

BENO 2025 Conference

THEME: 

And Justice for All?

DATE:

Thursday afternoon, 2/27 and Friday morning, 2/28, all on Zoom


As part of the conference, join us Thursday, Feb 27th from 3p-4p for Virtual Networking via Zoom!

 
Chat room options will include: 
  1. Academic bioethics and early career bioethics
  2. Pediatric Ethics
  3. Ethics in rural settings
  4. Ethics curious? New-to-clinical ethics, general interest

Gulnar Feerasta, MSSA, MNO (she/they)
Adjunct Faculty, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Senior Atlantic Fellow for Global Health Equity, Atlantic Institute, Oxford
Managing Director, The LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland

Gulnar Feerasta (she/they) brings a wealth of experience and passion to their role as a champion for equity within LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities. With a strong background in strategic planning, advocacy, and program management, Gulnar's career is dedicated to addressing health disparities and advancing health equity.

Their leadership journey at the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, where they rose from Director of Programs to Managing Director, is characterized by a track record of success in strengthening and expanding core programs, developing evidence-based interventions, and facilitating community collaboration to improve social determinants of health for the LGBTQ+ community. Most notably, Gulnar spearheaded the Center’s efforts to secure a transformative $2 million grant through Mackenzie Scott’s Yield Lever for Change open call—an investment that will deepen the Center’s capacity to serve and uplift LGBTQ+ communities across Northeast Ohio.

With dual master’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University and international experiences in New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea, Gulnar’s leadership philosophy emphasizes solidarity and community-centered approaches, rooted in the belief that "we are who we serve.” As a distinguished Senior Atlantic Fellow for Global Health Equity, she advocates for social justice and health equity locally and globally. In recognition of her contribution to community leadership, Gulnar was honored as a 2022 Notable Immigrant Leader by Crain's Cleveland, a 2024 "Lend Your Voice - Health Care for All” champion by the Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN) of Ohio, and more recently recognized by Engage Cleveland as a “24 to Know in 2024” Emerging Professional.

Beyond their work at the Center, Gulnar actively contributes to local committees, boards, and research studies, leveraging her expertise to promote equitable healthcare access and community empowerment. Her diverse background and unwavering commitment to inclusivity make her a driving force for positive change in service of fostering resilient communities.

Amanda Harvan, APRN-CNP
Summa Health

Amanda Harvan has been working with older adults since she started volunteering in an adult day program in high school and realized that “these were her people”. This desire to work with older adults and their caregivers led her to study nursing and ultimately obtain her master’s degree from the Ohio State University and a certificate as an adult nurse practitioner. She also holds a certification as a geriatric specialist. Over the past 18 years as an NP, she has had the blessing of working with many older adults and their caregivers across the care continuum. She has honed her clinical skills seeing patients in the hospital, nursing home, office and home setting. For the past 8 years, she has also served as a volunteer guardian for Summit County’s Adult Guardianship Services program. Her passion is helping older adults and their caregivers navigate the cognitive and functional changes of aging.

Mark G. Kuczewski, PhD, HEC-C
Professor of Medical Ethics
Director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy
Loyola University, Chicago Stritch School of Medicine

As a proponent for the equitable and ethical treatment of immigrant patients, Dr. Mark Kuczewski, PhD, HEC-C, advocates for creating a safe and welcoming clinical environment for patients of all immigration statuses. In addition, he argues that clinicians need to understand the larger social needs and stressors of immigrant patients and refer to resources to offset these barriers to health. He has also argued for a prohibition on forced medical repatriation and dividing health insurance from immigration status. He analyzes U.S. immigration trends and incorporates a cultural and spiritual perspective into decision-making. His work to include Dreamers of DACA status in medical education while a project manager at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine resulted in Stritch being the first medical school in the US to accept applications from Dreamers. Kuczewski is the director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, former president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), and a Hastings Center Fellow. Kuczewski is currently a Professor of Medical Ethics at Loyola University.

Tim Lahey, MD, MMSc, HEC-C, FACP (he/him)
Professor of Medicine at the UVM Larner College of Medicine
Director of Ethics at the University of Vermont Medical Center

Dr. Tim Lahey, MD, MMSc, HEC-C, FACP, is an infectious disease physician and Director of Ethics at the University of Vermont Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at the UVM Larner College of Medicine. Specializing in infectious diseases and clinical ethics, Dr. Lahey has written about clinical and organizational ethics, HIV and tuberculosis immunology, and infectious diseases epidemiology. Beyond academic scholarship, Dr. Lahey has published widely in popular outlets like the The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic and beyond. Dr. Lahey is on the national board of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a member of the Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certification Commission, an award-winning educator and was Vermont Physician of the Year in 2022.

Karen O. Moss, PhD, RN, CNL, FNAP
Assistant Professor of Nursing
College of Nursing, The Ohio State University

Dr. Karen Moss is a registered nurse and nurse scientist who is an Assistant Professor of Nursing in the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. She is a distinguished fellow in the National Academy of Practice - Nursing Academy. Dr. Moss’ work is focused on improving advance care planning and pain outcomes by advancing palliative and end-of-life care for older adults living with dementia and their family caregivers. She examines multiple perspectives on factors that influence pain and end-of-life decision-making processes for Black American older adults living with dementia and their family caregivers. This includes examining pain and stress in older adults living with dementia and their family caregivers. Dr. Moss’ research is also focused on developing and testing Pair 2 Care©, a co-created peer support program to support Black American dementia family caregivers. Through her work, Dr. Moss and her team is actively working to improve the quality of life of Black American family caregivers and their older adults living with dementia.

Daniel Skinner, PhD
Professor of Health Policy
Department of Social Medicine at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM)

Daniel Skinner, PhD is Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Social Medicine at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM), in Dublin, Ohio where he teaches medical students about the intersections of policy, politics and health. His scholarly interests include healthcare politics and policy; the politics of medicine and disease; and hospital-community relations.

In addition to many peer-reviewed articles, Skinner is author of Medical Necessity: Health Care Access and the Politics of Decision Making (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), co-editor of Not Far From Me: Stories of Opioids and Ohio (Ohio State University Press, 2019) and co-author of The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities (University of Chicago Press, 2023).

Dr. Skinner is also editor-in-chief for the journal World Medical & Health Policy and host of Prognosis Ohio, a healthcare podcast produced in collaboration with the Columbus-based NPR affiliate, WCBE. Dr. Skinner holds a PhD in political science from the City University of New York, The Graduate Center.

Dr. Shameka Poetry Thomas, PhD (she/her)
Founder of SICKLE CELL WOMEN AND GIRLS Research Lab, Ghana
Provost Scholar and Research Faculty Tenure Track,
The Ohio State University’s College of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy’s Center for Bioethics

Dr. Shameka Thomas, PhD, is a research faculty and provost scholar on the tenure track at The Ohio State University’s College of Medicine in the Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy’s Center for Bioethics. Her research focuses on global bioethics, noninvasive prenatal testing, reproductive genetics, sickle cell disease, and advancing health equity among Black and African populations. She recently completed the Fogarty International Global Health Fellowship at Harvard University, School of Public Health. She also found and led a project called: SICKLE CELL WOMEN & GIRLS (S.W.A.G.) PROJECT OF ACCRA, GHANA, at the Ghana Institute of Clinical Genetics, where she lived abroad in Ghana, West Africa for 12 consecutive months. Dr. Thomas completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship intramural at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) / National Human Genomics Research Institutes, focusing on patient perceptions of genetic technology among Black women with genetic conditions. Dr. Thomas’ dissertation was also nominated for the Most Outstanding Dissertation award in 2020. Currently, she serves as the Vice President of Beyond Global Health Organization and is on the editorial board of advisors for Springer Nature’s Maternal and Child Health Journal.

 

Conference Registration

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* Registration is open through 2/26. $5 processing fee for refunds. NO REFUNDS after February 12, 2025

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