Steve O'Neill, LICSW, BCD, JD is a professor, clinical social worker and bioethicist who has taught at Harvard Medical School and Simmons University Graduate School of Social Work for over 40/30 years. He is currently the Director of Behavioral Health for the OpenNotes Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. At BIDMC and until his semi-retirement, Steve oversaw most of the Mental/Behavioral Health Programs and was the Associate Director of Ethics Programs, which he also helped to found. He started the first ever program at BIDMC making mental/behavioral health therapy notes directly available to patients through their personal computers (2014). He has been actively involved in teaching about OpenNotes throughout the globe, along with researching the effects of transparency within patient care, especially in mental health and bioethics. He helped author the Massachusetts Crisis Standards of Care for disaster planning/pandemics, as well as the National Association of Social Worker’s Professional Standards of Conduct and contributed to revisions of the NASW Code of Ethics. In 2024, he was honored with NASW (MA)’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lectures widely on clinical and organizational ethics, mental health and risk management issues and is the author/co-author of numerous articles, chapters and a book on Legal Issues in Social Work (2004).
