On October 15, 2024, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics hosted a day-long event in collaboration with the Advanced Ethics in Leadership Program (AELP). As part of an ongoing focus on moral leadership in medicine, participants spent the day reflecting and strategizing about how best to “lead up” in all its connotations. This included preparing and setting the stage for a better future for health care; guiding a team or organization towards the goal of more ethical health care decision-making; and influencing those in higher positions to champion a certain decision or action.

AELP co-directors included Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, FACP of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Ira Bedzow, PhD of the Emory Purpose Project at Emory University, and Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. The team brought together experienced facilitators to deliver a leadership training methodology that focused on real-world skills for ethical awareness, ethical analysis, and – especially important – ethical action. The curriculum involved breakout sessions and group work about some of the most important ethical dilemmas confronting leaders in health care today, including the unionization of clinicians, post-pandemic financial pressures, constitutional rights to abortion care, and threats of criminal prosecution and civil litigation.

Participants also heard from a panel of experts including Susannah Baruch, JD of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, Elliott Crigger, PhD of Howard Brown Health, and Mildred Solomon, EdD and Joan Reede, MD, MPH, MS, MBA of Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Wynia also presented a lecture, ‘The Short History and Tenuous Future of Professionalism in Medicine,’ to event participants and in a public livestream. The recording is now available on YouTube.