Immersive Bioethics Internships for High School Students
Thursday, October 12, 2023
9:45 AM – 11:00 AM ET
Location: Dover C (Third Floor)
The medical ethics division at a large academic medical center received a grant in early 2023 to develop and expand a project to introduce bioethics concepts to students at high schools in underserved communities. Part of this mission will be achieved through bioethics “intensives,” two-week paid internships designed to introduce students to ethical issues surrounding healthcare, public health, biotech, science, law, education, and other topics to be guided by the interns’ interest. During the first sessions, scheduled for summer 2023, faculty will survey the bioethics landscape with the goal of sparking an interest in bioethics, placing special emphasis on issues related to justice and equity. Students who complete the internships will be equipped to incorporate these concerns in their educations and careers, fulfilling a core belief of the project: that integrating bioethics instruction into high school classrooms will equip future generations with the skills necessary for addressing the ethical and policy choices in healthcare and biomedicine that lie ahead. This presentation, based on a paper in progress about the evolution of the high school bioethics project, will describe successes and challenges of creating these abbreviated internships: how the project developed curricula, enlisted faculty and administrators, identified target schools and promoted the internships, and interviewed and selected candidates. Lessons learned and participant feedback will both inform the project going forward and provide a roadmap for piquing younger students’ interest in bioethics more broadly.