Illinois Tech’s Center for Study of Ethics in the Professions presents a webinar featuring guest speaker Michele L. McGowan, professor of biomedical ethics and co-director of the Biomedical Ethics Research Program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. This webinar is open to the public will take place on Thursday, March 21, at 12:45 p.m. Please register.

Abstract

There is considerable enthusiasm for moving clinical research outside of traditional research environments and promoting research participation among populations that have been historically less likely to contribute to population genetic research. While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated opportunities for decentralizing clinical research, several ethical and logistical considerations remain. Drawing on her own experience of leading an adolescent genomic decision-making clinical trial with a virtual arm, Michele L. McGowan will illustrate opportunities and challenges to fully decentralizing genomic research and the continued relevance of calls for population-representative and equitable participation in genomic research.

Bio

Michelle L. McGowan is a professor of biomedical ethics and co-director of the Biomedical Ethics Research Program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She completed a B.A. in Sociology at Boston College, a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies at University of Washington, and a postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics at Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining Mayo Clinic in 2022, McGowan held faculty positions at Case Western Reserve University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Cincinnati. McGowan is an empirical bioethicist whose research explores ethical and social implications of emerging health technologies and policies. Combining a range of qualitative and normative methods, her empirically informed approach to bioethics scholarship focuses on addressing the uneven distribution of benefits and burdens of associated with the uptake of technologies in healthcare and biomedical research. She is currently a principal investigator of a multiple-PI National Human Genome Research Institute-funded hybrid clinical trial focused on adolescent decision-making in relation to prospective genomic screening.