Ethics in Health Policy Research

Clinical Science Research & Editorial Activities

With Division of Ethics and Health Policy (DEAHP) faculty representing the disciplines of ethics, history, medical anthropology, philosophy, and medicine/psychiatry, DEAHP research spans a wide range of topics, methods, and publication media. Use the topical headings below to link to foci of interest.

John Z. Sadler, MD

Works in Progress

  • Vice and Psychiatric Diagnosis
    • One of the important insights from my 2005 book, Values and Psychiatric Diagnosis (Oxford University Press), is that psychiatric diagnostic categories in the DSMs are often “vice-laden”, meaning that concepts and criteria have social meanings involving wrongful thought and conduct and even criminal conduct. In this current follow-up project, I ask questions about the significance of vice-laden psychiatric categories, why some vice-laden categories (such as Conduct Disorder or Pedophilia) appear, and why other vices do not, and what, if anything, should be done about vice-laden psychiatric concepts. This is a major book project. This publication provides a nice overview: Sadler, J.Z. 2008. Vice and the diagnostic classification of mental disorders: A philosophical case conference. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 15(1):1-17.

Current Projects  

  • Medical Students’ Dark Hours of The Soul
    • I doubt this will be the final title to this qualitative research project, but this project, done in collaboration with the UT Southwestern Colleges Directors group, will be examining hundreds of deidentified third-year medical students’ reflective essays, which focus on ethical and professional issues (positive and negative) encountered on various clerkship sites. Currently we are learning to use the CDC’s AnSWR software and will be reading and coding prevailing themes raised by the students in their essays. We hope to capture a near-complete sample of the hundreds of essays completed by our students on their third-year clerkship rotations.

Editorial Activities and Scholarly Activities

  • Co-editor, (with K. W. M. Fulford) of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology (Johns Hopkins University Press)
  • Co-editor (with K. W. M. Fulford, Katherine Morris, & Giovanni Stanghellini) of the Oxford University Press book series,“International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry”
  • Co-editor (with K. W. M. Fulford and Paul Hoff) of the annual section on “History and philosophy” for Current Opinion in Psychiatry (Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins)
  • At-large member, NIH Clinical-Translational Science Award National Consortium, Clinical Research Ethics Key Function Operations Committee.
  • 1992-Present Reviewer, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
  • 1993-1995 Contributing Editor, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
  • 1993-Present Co-Editor and Reviewer, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology
  • 1994-Present Reviewer, Academic Medicine
  • 1995-Present Reviewer, Academic Psychiatry
  • 1996-Present Reviewer, Journal of Abnormal Psychology
  • 2000-Present Reviewer, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
  • 2000-Present Co-Editor, History and Philosophy Section of Current Opinion in Psychiatry (D.J. Kupfer and N. Sartorius, Editors)
  • 2002-Present Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
  • 2006-Present Member, Editorial Board, Philosophy, Ethics, & Humanities in Medicine (online)
  • 2008-Present Member, Editorial Board, Journal für Philosophie & Psychiatrie
  • 2009-Present Reviewer, American Journal of Psychiatry
  • 2009-Present Reviewer, Philosophical Psychology
  • 2009-Present Reviewer, CyberPsychology

Scholarly Associations

Recent Division Publications

  • Beskow, L.M., Grady, C., Iltis, A.S., Sadler, J.Z., and Wilfond, B.S.: 2009. Points to consider: The research ethics consultation service and the IRB. IRB: Ethics & Human Research 31(6):1-9.
  • Brandon, A.R., Shivakumar, G., Craddock Lee, S., Inrig, S.J., and Sadler, J.Z. 2009. Ethical issues in perinatal mental health research. Current Opinion in Psychiatry 99(6):601-606.
  • Brandon, A.R., Shivakumar, G., Inrig, S.J., Craddock Lee, S., and Sadler, J.Z. 2009. The cost of restricting knowledge. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 70(9):1320.
  • Sadler, J.Z., Jotterand, F., Craddock Lee, S., and Inrig, S. 2009. Can medicalization be good? Situating medicalization within bioethics. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 30: 411-425.

Stephen J. Inrig PhD

Works in Progress

  • History of the World Health Organization’s Global AIDS Program
  • History of AIDS in the American South
  • History of Pediatric HIV Clinical Trials

Current Projects

  • History of HIV/AIDS in North Carolina

Editorial Activities and Scholarly Associations

Fabrice Jotterand, PhD

Simon J. Craddock Lee, PhD, MPH

Works in Progress

  • Book Manuscripts
    • Caring with the Other: Sustaining Identity in Secular Pluralism
      • Dr. Lee is revising a full-length book manuscript that uses an ethnographic account of one of the largest Catholic not-for-profit hospital systems to examine broader theoretical questions about ethical practice, religious forms, and social organizations. As one reviewer notes, the “frame of mission vs. margin is developed in diverse registers -- as two rhetorics, two domains of value, two organizational principles, and avatars of tradition and modernity.”
    • An Institution of Difference: Disease, Disparity, and Cancer Science
      • Drawn from research conducted prior to joining Southwestern, Dr. Lee has begun to develop a second manuscript exploring the social construction of “cancer health disparities” as a modern problem through an ethnographic account of health scientist administrators at a federal public health science agency. The identification of stark inequalities in mortality and burden of disease between populations reshapes basic science research with a moral purpose to reduce social suffering. In this sense, the field of health disparities research reflects an ethics of being-in-world. The narrative frames disparities research within a broader treatment of the role of government in shaping and advancing objective science, peer review and funding as a social process, and the complex identities of the health scientist administrator as intellectual entrepreneur, scientific incubator/cultivator, and federal bureaucrat.

Current Project

  •  An Anthropological Pilot Study: Organizational Dynamics Affecting Clinical Research Participation through a Cancer Center

Editorial Activities and Scholarly Associations

  • Elected to a three-year term as Chair of the Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology, a standing committee of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), beginning in November 2008.
  • Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA).
  • Recently served on an NIH Special Emphasis panel (study section) to review proposals for a joint center initiative sponsored by the NHLBI, NCI, NIDDK, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR).
  • Peer reviewer for Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry; Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Medical Decision-Making; PsychoOncology.
  • Peer reviewer for the National Science Foundation program in Science, Technology, and Society, which funds research examining historical, philosophical, and sociological questions arising in connection with science, engineering, and technology, and their respective interactions with society.

Recent Division Publications

  • Lee SJC and Sadler, JZ. (2011) “Research Ethics: Pitfalls and Prescriptions” (14 ethical commentaries) In McPhaul, MJ and RD Toto (Eds.) Clinical Research: From Proposal to Implementation. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams/Kluwer.
  • Lee SJC (2010) “Uncertain Futures: Individual Risk & Social Context in Decision-making in Cancer Screening” Health, Risk & Society 12(2):101-17.
  • Lee, SJC (2009) “Science, Surveillance, and the Politics of Redress in Health Disparities Research” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 3(1):51-74
  • Sadler JZ, Jotterand F, Lee SJC, Inrig SJ. (2009) “Can Medicalization be Good? Situating Medicalization within Bioethics” Theoretical Medicine & Bioethics 30(6):411-25.
  • Kiviniemi MT, Hay JL, James AS, Lipkus IM, Meissner HI, Stefanek M, Studts JL, Bridges JFP, Close DR, Erwin DO, Jones RM, Kaiser K, Kash KM, Kelly KM, Craddock Lee SJ, Purnell JQ, Siminoff LA, Vadaparampil ST, Wang C. (2009) “Decision Making about Cancer Screening: An Assessment of the State of the Science and a Suggested Research Agenda from the ASPO Behavioral Oncology and Cancer Communication Special Interest Group.” Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention 18(11): 3133-37
  • Brandon AR, Shivakumar G, Lee SJC, Inrig SJ, Sadler JZ. “Ethical Issues in Perinatal Mental Health Research” (2009) Current Opinion in Psychiatry 2 September 2009
  • Hay JL and Lee SJC (2009) Theory-building through Qualitative Research: Marshalling opportunities to advance cancer screening efforts. Health Education & Behavior 36 (Suppl.1):145S-49S
  • Brandon AR, Shivakumar G, Inrig SJ, Lee SJC, Sadler JZ. (2009)“The Cost of Restricting Knowledge” Perspectives on Perinatal Depression Treatment Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 70(9): 1320-1
  • Han PK, T Lehman, H Massett, WMP Klein, SJC Lee, AN Freedman. (2009) Laypersons’ responses to the communication of uncertainty regarding cancer risk estimates (a qualitative analysis) Medical Decision Making 29(3): 391-403.
  • Lee, SJC. Health science: from bench to bedside to trench and back (Correspondence) Nature. 2008 Jul 17;454(7202):274.
  • Lee, SJC. “Ethics of Articulation: Constituting identity in a Catholic Hospital System” In Sorrell Dinkins, C. and J. Sorrell (Eds.). Listening to the Whispers: Re-Thinking Ethics in Healthcare. (2006) Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Invited chapter, peer reviewed.
  • Lee, SJC. “Rethinking race and ethnicity in health disparities” Anthropology News 47(3):7-8, March 2006; also in conjunction with Understanding Race & Human Variation, a public education project of the American Anthropological Association.