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The Petrie-Flom Center seeks to foster interdisciplinary collaboration on a wide range of issues relating to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics that span Harvard University and reach into the wider academic and professional communities. This list represents some of our most frequent partners.

Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School

The Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program is committed to analyzing and enhancing the treatment of animals in the legal system. The Program aims to engage with academics, students, practitioners, and decision makers to foster discourse, facilitate scholarship, develop strategies, and implement solutions in the rapidly evolving area of animal law & policy.

Learn more about the Animal Law & Policy Program!

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT is founded on two core beliefs:

  1. This generation has a historic opportunity and responsibility to transform medicine by using systematic approaches in the biological sciences to dramatically accelerate the understanding and treatment of disease.

  2. To fulfill this mission, we need new kinds of research institutions, with a deeply collaborative spirit across disciplines and organizations, and having the capacity to tackle ambitious challenges.

Learn more about the Broad Institute!

Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School launched the Center for Bioethics out of the conviction that we have a particular responsibility to ensure that values and ethics are always part of medical training, laboratory and clinical research and ongoing professional education. The Center’s mission is to bring together the rich intellectual resources of the medical school faculty with health professionals and scientists from its affiliated teaching hospitals along with other schools and departments at Harvard, as well as colleagues from other academic and health care institutions and research laboratories around the world to ensure that scientific progress, medical therapeutics, and health care practices proceed hand-in-hand with reflection about the profound moral questions raised by advances in the life sciences.

The Center is designed as a platform for integrating ethics and scientific discovery more closely than ever before, generating new forms of collaboration among students, bench scientists, clinical researchers, clinicians, practicing bioethicists, academic philosophers, historians of medicine, humanities scholars, and others able to bring their disciplinary perspectives to bear on the ethical challenges posed by present and future biomedical advances.

Aims of the Center

  • Teach ethics to medical students across the 4-year curriculum

  • Support and strengthen the ethics programs at HMS teaching hospitals and affiliated facilities

  • Prepare the next generation of practitioners and leaders in bioethics

  • Address contemporary ethical issues in the biosciences and health care

  • Engage the public in understanding and addressing ethical aspects of health care and new biotechnologies

The Master of Bioethics Degree

The Master of Bioethics Degree combines resources from Harvard Medical School, Harvard teaching hospitals, and departments all across the University.

The program is offered as either a 1-year (full-time) or 2-year (part-time) course of study. Students develop a personalized plan of study in conjunction with the Center for Bioethics faculty that includes:

  • Core Study – Foundational courses covering theoretical and applied ethics, strategies of ethical justification, and historical through contemporary challenges in bioethics.

  • Electives – Options to augment the Core Study program with course offerings at the Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, and across Harvard University.

  • Capstone Experience – A hands-on component to consolidate formal course learning. Whether a practical ethics experience working with a hospital or community ethics committee, participating on an Institutional Review Board, or completing a policy project, all candidates have the opportunity to work with the Center’s faculty and the Master’s Program Director to tailor a field experience for their specific interests.

Learn more about the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School and about the Masters of Bioethics Program.

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI) staff and students work on projects designed to improve access to health care and healthy foods as well as improve health outcomes through law and policy reform. CHLPI works with a diverse range of stakeholders to expand access to high-quality healthcare and nutritious, affordable food; reduce health disparities; develop community advocacy capacity; and promote healthier, more equitable, and effective healthcare and food systems. As a clinical teaching program, CHLPI mentors students to become skilled, innovative, and thoughtful practitioners as well as leaders in health, public health, and food law and policy.

The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation includes the Harvard Law School's Health Law & Policy Clinic and Food Law & Policy Clinic.

Learn more about the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation!

Center for Health Policy and Law, Northeastern University School of Law

Through teaching, research and engagement with key decision makers, Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law promotes innovative solutions to public health challenges at home and around the globe. The center advances law and policy reforms to strengthen population health, reduce health disparities, nourish public health programs and enhance access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. Housed in the School of Law and firmly rooted in the university’s nine academic colleges and international network of campuses, the center brings together Northeastern faculty, students and experts across disciplines to share knowledge; conduct and disseminate research; and influence the formulation and implementation of health policy and law.

Learn more about the Center for Health Policy and Law!

Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at MGH

From the Center's Mission Statement:

The impact of neuroscience on law, mental health care, finance and public policy will increase exponentially over the next 20 years, eventually touching each and every one of us. The Center for Law, Brain and Behavior (CLBB) at Massachusetts General Hospital promotes the sound translation of brain-based and behavioral science into law, finance, and public policy.

Neuroscience is transforming our ability to fundamentally understand ourselves and one another. Research in neurology, psychiatry, psychology, cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging is rapidly increasing our understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between brain functioning and behavior. As findings accumulate, judges and policymakers, looking for clear answers and practical metrics, have been asked to draw conclusions about personal responsibility and individual decision-making capacity using this new information.

[...]

The Center for Law, Brain and Behavior addresses these questions, among others, by monitoring relevant brain discoveries; promoting neuroscience that is responsible, ethical and scientifically sound; and discouraging premature or inappropriate use of scientific findings. The center is led by Bruce H. Price, M.D. and Judith G. Edersheim, J.D., M.D., clinicians with decades of experience in the fields of neurology, psychiatry and the law who are committed to enhancing social justice, particularly among those most vulnerable and underserved. [...]

Learn more about the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.

Since 2014, the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior and the Petrie-Flom Center have collaborated on the Project in Law and Applied Neuroscience. The collaboration includes a Senior Fellow in residence, public symposia, and a Law and Neuroscience Seminar at Harvard Law School taught by the Hon. Nancy Gertner. Learn more about the Project.

Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics seeks to advance teaching and research on ethical issues in public life. Widespread ethical lapses of leaders in government, business and other professions prompt demands for more and better moral education. More fundamentally, the increasing complexity of public life - the scale and range of problems and the variety of knowledge required to deal with them - make ethical issues more difficult, even for men and women of good moral character. Not only are the ethical issues we face more complex, but the people we face them with are more diverse, increasing the frequency and intensity of our ethical disagreements.

Given these changes in the United States and in societies around the globe, the Center seeks to help meet the growing need for teachers, scholars, and leaders who address questions of moral choice across many of the professions and in public life more generally, and promotes a perspective on ethics informed by both theory and practice. We explore the connection between the problems that professionals confront and the social and political structures in which they act. More generally, we address the ethical issues that all citizens face as they make the choices that profoundly affect the present and future of their societies in our increasingly interdependent world.

Learn more about the Safra Center!

Food Law Lab at Harvard Law School

The Food Law Lab at Harvard Law School seeks to bring transparency and insight to the federal, state, and international legal structure that impacts food to make food better, safer and healthier, by

  • Promoting research, scholarship and innovation in food law;

  • Supporting increased clarity in the legal regulation of food; and

  • Partnering with others in the field to develop new curricular offerings in this dynamic field.

Learn more about the Food Law Lab!

Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School

The Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) at Harvard Law School is the oldest food law clinical program in the United States. The FLPC was established in 2010 as a division of the Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation to address growing concerns about the health, environmental, and economic consequences of the laws and policies that structure the current U.S. food system. Under the supervision of FLPC attorneys, Harvard Law students get hands-on learning experience by conducting legal and policy research for individual and organizational clients working to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and assist small and sustainable farmers in breaking into new commercial markets. Students have the opportunity to develop a range of problem-solving, policy analysis, research and writing, oral communication, and leadership skills.

Learn more about about Food Law and Policy Clinic!

Harvard Health Law Society at Harvard Law School (HHLS)

The Harvard Health Law Society (HHLS) is a community dedicated to exploring issues at the intersection of health and law, connecting students and experts for active engagement.

Health care reform has set the stage for a variety of changes and inspired even more fervent debate about what to do next.  As such, health care policy and regulation will continue to be a focal point for HHLS this coming year, as it has in the past, with influential speakers coming to campus to debate the future of health care in Massachusetts and the nation. In addition, we are in the process of forming collaborations with a variety of community-based organizations.  We hope that these partnerships will provide opportunities to 1L’s and other HLS students to work on the frontlines of community health advocacy in the Boston area.We also plan to bring in speakers from the great variety of health-related legal careers.  This will help expose our members to what is out there and help connect students with potential future employers.  Finally, we look forward to connecting students with the many health-related opportunities available at Harvard and beyond, and to actively engaging new members to help bring in speakers on topics of their choosing, such as global health, bioethics, pharmaceutical policy, or anything else! 

Who is part of HHLS?

  • HLS and other Harvard students interested in health policy, health care law, biotechnology, bioethics, health and human rights, and a range of other health and law topics.  You can join simply by signing up for our email list and coming to our events.

With whom does HHLS collaborate?

  • Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics

  • Health groups at other Harvard graduate schools, including the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Business School

  • Various student groups at HLS

What can I do as part of HHLS?

  • Attend health-related speaker events and panels at HLS and across Harvard University.

  • Bring speakers to campus on health topics of your choosing. Past events have included medical bankruptcy, racial disparities in health care, careers in health law, and importation of foreign pharmaceuticals.

  • Learn about Harvard students’ research on health care topics at the Health Law and Policy Colloquium.

  • Attend faculty lunches and meet HLS professors to discuss health law and research topics and to receive career advice.

  • Participate in informal dialogue with other students, alumni, health professionals and health lawyers through happy hours and mentoring.

  • Get answers to questions about joint degrees, recommended classes, and networking opportunities.

  • Volunteer with one of our new community partners and help improve the health of low-income individuals and families in Boston through legal advocacy.

Learn more about HHLS!

Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI)

Our world of fluid populations, where risk may be transferred as rapidly as data, demands a global response that is every bit as dynamic - and open to the unexpected - as our global challenges. The scale and complexity of emerging 21st century challenges will require scholars, practitioners, and policy makers - with different areas of expertise and perspectives - to create previously unimagined connections at the borders of traditional disciplines.

Harvard University has among the world's strongest platforms for global health research and education with its internationally recognized schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health, acclaimed teaching hospitals, and prominent health-relevant institutes and centers.  Building on this foundation, the Institute leverages the intellectual breadth and collective expertise of a body of world class non-health professional schools - providing a unique platform...

Learn more about HGHI!

MRCT Center of Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital

The Purpose of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials (MRCT) Center of Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital is…

  • To improve the design, conduct, and oversight of multi-regional clinical trials, focusing on trials sited in or involving the developing world

  • To simplify research through the use of best practices

  • To foster respect for research participants, efficacy, safety and fairness in transnational, trans-cultural human subject research

Learn more about MRCT!

Science, Religion, and Culture (SRC) at Harvard Divinity School

Science, Religion, and Culture (SRC) at Harvard Divinity School organizes colloquia, seminars, and workshops that promote interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration among scholars and students across Harvard University and beyond.

These studies of science and religion investigate many different socio-historical contexts, and they aim to carefully analyze anthropological, historical, philosophical, and theological dimensions of the particular discourses, conversations, and constructions that appear in these contexts. These studies also carefully engage questions of race, gender and sexuality among other issues of inclusion and exclusion that transform the production and consumption of scientific and religious discourses and products.

Learn more on SRC's website.

Scientific Citizenship Initiative (SCI)

The Scientific Citizenship Initiative will accomplish the goal of improving the quantity and quality of interactions between scientists and society by:

Embedding skills and practical experience in scientific citizenship (ethics, communication, outreach, advocacy, governance and leadership) within the training experience for STEM students at the graduate and undergraduate level, re-aligning training to meet the interests of a current generation of trainees motivated by the social and external impact of their work.

Supporting the retention of students in doctoral training, through learning activities that connect students (including women and URMs) to collaborative projects with their own communities.

Supporting the retention of trainees in scientific careers or emerging careers, through the introduction of a revitalized training experience which explicitly prepares students for multi-dimensional careers which either include a combination of scientific research and interface with society at large or careers specializing in working on behalf of the scientific community in the arenas of government, industry, media or non-profits.

Introducing and sustaining interdisciplinary fellowships and executive education programs positioning participating institutions as leaders which provides formal training, curriculum and resources for faculty and fellows interested in these careers, initially from the Boston community and eventually from a broader national pool.

Developing and sustaining a curriculum, events and resources available to all members of the scientific community, who may be interested in taking advantage of modular training resources even if not able to commit to the full training experience.

Deliberately identifying and challenging cultural norms and that are inhibiting civic engagement at all scales of organization in science (eg. in labs, departments, and institutions), and testing solutions to overcome these barriers.

Providing an access point for organizations and members of the surrounding community to better engage with and understand the research enterprise, the work which takes place at participating institutions, and to understand how this work can be transformative for their own lives.

Serving as a medium through which community interests can be brought to attention of the Boston academic community whose members can help tackle emerging social and ethical challenges; whether at the local, national or international level; and which depend on proficiency in collaborative problem-solving, advocacy, communication and policy.

Learn more about SCI!