About The Petrie-Flom Center
The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is a prominent research program dedicated to legal analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship on the questions facing health policymakers, medical professionals, industry leaders, patients, and families. The Center was founded in 2005 through a generous gift from Joseph H. Flom ’48 and the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation.
Led by Faculty Director Professor I. Glenn Cohen and Executive Director Susannah Baruch, the Center fosters a community of leading intellectuals, practitioners, and policymakers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, at all stages in their careers, across Harvard University and around the globe.
Our work includes
Research portfolio
We deeply engage in scholarly research through collaborations across Harvard and throughout the world. Our projects address timely topics, from artificial intelligence in medicine to the legal and ethical issues surrounding psychedelics. Ongoing research projects include global health and rights, law and applied neuroscience, and advanced care and health policy. Past projects include digital home health, research regulation and ethics, the health of professional football players, and patient-centered outcomes research.
Center affiliates also work on or have worked on topics such as reproductive health and technology, pharmaceutical and device regulation, healthcare economics, human subjects research regulation, medical tourism, conflicts of interest in medicine, religion and health policy, and health law and behavioral economics.
Academic programs
Through our fellowship programs we train law students, medical students, post-doctoral students, and others, producing leading health law practitioners and scholars at top schools around the country. We run programs for visitors and senior scholars, curricular opportunities through courses and workshops, and provide mentorship and writing opportunities for Harvard students, including a coveted fellowship for graduate students.
Public engagement
We communicate and inform through frequent high-profile events and conferences, extensive media commentary, the popular health policy and bioethics blog Bill of Health, an active YouTube channel, social media posts, an occasional podcast, and other freely available resources.
We publish the peer-reviewed, open-access Journal of Law and Biosciences with partners at Stanford and Duke Universities. And for more than a decade, the Center has produced annual edited volumes on cutting-edge topics in health policy and bioethics.
Our Third Decade
For 20 years, the Petrie-Flom Center has established a national and international reputation for expertise and excellence in our fields. We are known and respected for our legal and policy research, public-facing events, and influential workshops and roundtables. Our student fellows and other affiliates have become acclaimed professors and experts in health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics. Readership of our blog Bill of Health has grown to nearly a million views a year.
In an increasingly complex world, our broad and deep engagement—through expert conversations, unbiased inquiry, interdisciplinary collaborations, and practical policy recommendations and solutions—will continue to grow.
Support the Center
Although our home is at Harvard Law School, the Petrie-Flom Center is independently funded through gifts, grants, and other funding arrangements. Please consider supporting our work by contributing to the Center. If you would like to discuss possibilities or learn what your gift could support, please contact Susannah Baruch, Executive Director, to learn more about opportunities to get involved in our work. You can also make a monetary donation to our program HERE by selecting “other” in the drop-down menu and typing “Petrie-Flom Center” as the fund name.