ETHICS AND POLICY WORKING GROUP

The Ethics and Policy working group is available for consultations in developing research and ensuring equity and sustainability of work with vulnerable populations. See below for bios of our members. If you would like a consultation with a member of this working group, please use the consultation request form.

Ronald Bayer is a Professor at the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1988.

Prior to coming to Columbia, he was at the Hastings Center, a research institute devoted to the study of ethical issues in medicine and the life sciences. Dr. Bayer's research has examined ethical and policy issues in public health, with a special focus on AIDS, tuberculosis, illicit drugs, and tobacco.

Robert Klitzman is a Research Scientist and Investigator with the HIV Center's Development Core. He co-founded the Columbia University Center for Bioethics, and is the Director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia. He is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, and a member of the Division of Psychiatry, Law and Ethics in the Department of Psychiatry.

His book, Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women With HIV, examines the meanings of HIV infection, the ways in which individuals living with HIV find sources of hope in their lives, and the ways the virus alters individuals' identities and social and moral worlds. He has conducted research with Ronald Bayer, Ph.D. on self-disclosure of HIV serostatus to sexual partners and others, examining how individuals - both heterosexual and gay - make decisions about whether, what, when, and to whom to disclose.