Charlene Galarneau, PhD, MAR
Charlene A. Galarneau, PhD, MAR, is Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, part-time, in the Master of Science in Bioethics Program at Harvard Medical School, and Associate Professor Emerita of Wellesley College’s Women’s and Gender Studies Department. Her research explores the ethics of U. S. health care, public health, and health policy that take seriously intersecting social relations including gender and race.
Her 2016 book, Communities of Health Care Justice, presents a concept of community justice that understands multiple and diverse communities as critical moral participants in determining the nature of justice in U.S. health care. Current areas of research include eugenics in Vermont and racism and bioethics, while earlier research foci involved health equity and crisis standards of care, USPHS STD experiments in Guatemala, ACA exclusions (undocumented immigrants) and exemptions (health care sharing ministries), reproductive justice, and FDA blood donor deferral policies. Her articles appear in The American Journal of Bioethics, The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Health and Human Rights, The Hastings Center Report, The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, Canadian Journal of Bioethics/Revue Canadienne de Bioéthique, Public Health Ethics, and The Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
In the MBE Program, Charlene teaches U.S. Eugenics: Legacies and Resurgences. Past course teaching/co-teaching includes Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Bioethics, the year-long Foundations course sequence, and Feminist Bioethics. She has served as a faculty advisor, a capstone mentor, and a commentator at clinical ethics consortia.
Charlene was an HMS Fellow in Medical Ethics (1999-2000); a member of the Ethics Committee of the Tufts-New England Medical Center (1999-2005); and a consultant to the development of a municipal ethics committee in Portland, Maine. Prior to Wellesley College she was faculty at Tufts University, Community Health Program (1996-2005) with a secondary appointment at Tufts Medical School where she lectured in medical ethics, co-directed an ethics course for second year medical students, co-led curricular redesign in ethics and professionalism, and co-coordinated a monthly bioethics series with faculty university wide.
The MBE Class of 2018 selected Charlene to give its faculty commencement address. She was honored with Wellesley College’s Anna and Samuel Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2009) and received the Outstanding Contribution to the Academy Alumni/ae Award from the Iliff School of Theology (2007).
She holds a doctorate from Harvard University with a focus in religious social ethics and health policy and a master’s degree from the Iliff School of Theology. Her academic interests are inspired by her early health care work with rural community/migrant health centers and the communities they serve.
Book
- 2016 Communities of Health Care Justice (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press).
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
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2023 Galarneau, C. and P. T. Smith, “Respect for Communities in Health Justice,” Special Issue: Health Justice: Engaging Critical Perspectives in Health Law and Policy, The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 50 (2022): 650-655.
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2022 Ipgrave, B. et al. (co-author), “From Small Beginnings: To Build an Anti-Eugenic Future,” The Lancet, May 21, 2022, (399): 1934-35.
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2022 Galarneau, C. and P. T. Smith, “Speaking Volumes: The Encyclopedia of Bioethics and Racism,” in Special Report: “A Critical Moment in Bioethics: Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism through Intergenerational Dialogue,” Hastings Center Report (March-April 2022) 52(S1): S50-S56.
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2022 “Recognizing Racism in US Bioethics as the Subject of Bioethical Concern,” Canadian Journal of Bioethics/Revue Canadienne de Bioéthique 5(1): 62-67.
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2021 Galarneau, C. and R. Yearby, “Racism, Health Equity, and Crisis Standards of Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” St. Louis University Journal of Health Law and Policy, Special Issue: Health Equity and Justice Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic, 14(2): 211-249.
- 2021 “True Colors: Whiteness in Bioethics,” American Journal of Bioethics, 21(2): 33-35.
- 2020 “Discharge Dissonance,” Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research, Symposium: Ethical Challenges in Discharge Planning: Stories from Patients, 10(3): (winter issue).
- 2020 “Communities Matter,” Hastings Center Report 50(3): 63-64.
- 2019 “Many Ways of Looking’: Physician Refusal of Embryo Transfer.” Harvard Medical School Bioethics Journal (Summer).
- 2018 “Getting King’s Words Right,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
29(1): 5-8. , - 2015 “Health Care Sharing Ministries and Their Exemption from the Individual Mandate of the Affordable Care Act,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 12(2): 269-282.
- 2013 “Farm Labor, Reproductive Justice: Migrant Women Farmworkers in the U.S., Health and Human Rights: An International Journal (15)1: 144–60.
- 2013 “‘Ever Vigilant’ in ‘Ethically Impossible’: Structural Injustice and Responsibility in PHS Research in Guatemala,” Hastings Center Report 43(3): 36–45.
- 2011 “Still Missing in 2011: Undocumented Immigrants in Health Care Reform,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 22(2): 422–28.
- 2010 “Blood Donation, Deferral, and Discrimination: FDA Donor Deferral Policy for Men Who Have Sex with Men,“ American Journal of Bioethics, 10(2): 29-39.2010–19.
- 2010 “‘The H in HIV Stands for Human, Not Haitian’: Cultural Imperialism in US Blood Donor Policy,“ Public Health Ethics, 3(3):210
Book Chapter
- 2007 “Consumer-Sponsored Health Care Plans: Early 20th C. Public Participation in U.S. Health Care,” in Acting Civically: From Urban Neighborhoods to Higher Education, ed. Susan A. Ostrander and Kent E. Portney (Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press), 113–29.
Encyclopedia Entry
- 2006 “Health and Medicine,” in Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development, ed. Elizabeth M. Dowling and W. George Scarlett (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 191–195.
Book Reviews
- 2013 “Review of Anne-Maree Farrell, The Politics of Blood: Ethics, Innovation and the Regulation of Risk” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), in American Journal of Bioethics 13(4): 54–56.
- 2012 “The Ethics of Bioethics,” review of Karla F. C. Holloway, Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and Cultural Bioethics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), in Women’s Review of Books, 29(2): 24-26.
- 2009 “Review of Keith Wailoo, Julie Livingston, and Peter Guarnaccia, eds., A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship,” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), in American Journal of Bioethics, 9(11): 69–70.
Web-Based and Other Publications
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2022 “Opinion: Why Bioethicists Can’t Ignore Racism,” Undark, July 7, 2022.
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2022 Brandt v. Rutledge, Brief of Amici Curiae Biomedical Ethics and Public Health Scholars in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees and Affirmance, Jan 28, 2022 (amica coauthor).
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2021 Marcelin, L. and C. Galarneau, “Resilient Sisterhood Project: Black Women’s Reproductive Health,” in Deportate, Esuli, Profughe: Rivista telematica sulla memoria femminile (Deportees, Exiled, Refugees: Online Journal on Women's Memory), N. 47, 11/2021, University of Venice, pp. 153-160.
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2021 ‘A Chronology of “State-sanctioned eugenics policies and practices”’ submitted to the Vermont Legislature, House and Senate Committees re: JRH 2 (State eugenics apology).
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2021 “The Communities of Health Justice,” Health Justice Symposium, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Bill of Health Blog, September 8.
- 2020 “The Health Equity Failures of Massachusetts’ COVID-19 Reopening Plan,” The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Bill of Health Blog, July 9.
- 2020 “Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing,” The Hastings Center, Bioethics Forum: Diverse Commentary on Issues in Bioethics, April 20.
- 2018 “Bathroom Bioethics,” The Hastings Center, Bioethics Forum: Diverse Commentary on Issues in Bioethics, Nov. 9.
- 2018 Blog, “Shared Benefits for Shared Communities?” The Spoke, Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, Wellesley College, May 4.
- 2018 Blog, “King’s Words on Health Injustice: what did he actually say?” International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, April 19.
- 2017 Blog, “On Sims’s Legacy: Work for Bioethics,” The Hastings Center, Bioethics Forum: Diverse Commentary on Issues in Bioethics, Aug. 17.
- 2016 Letter to Editor, “Christian Health Care,” The New York Times, March 21.
- 2015 Blog, “Ending Stigma – And Better Assessing Risk Among Blood Donors,” Cognescenti, WBUR, Jan. 13.
- 2012 Blog, “Time to Change FDA’s Discriminatory Blood Donation Policy,” The Hastings Center, Bioethics Forum: Diverse Commentary on Issues in Bioethics, Oct. 17.