Biography
Lori Bruce is the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and a research scientist at the Institution for Social & Policy Studies at Yale University. Her work centers on ethical policymaking and ethical policy analysis. She has influenced law and authored policy recommendations on scores of issues including ethics of psychedelics, medical aid in dying, trauma-informed policymaking, pediatric organ donation after cardiac death, infant safe haven and “baby box” laws, explicit consent for pelvic and prostate exams, palliative sedation, and doctor/patient social media communications.
She has consulted for President Obama’s Commission on Bioethics on community views relating to the Guatemalan syphilis research experiments and lectures nationally and internationally, including such places as Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; the U.S. Coast Guard Academy; Monash University in Australia; the Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine at the University of Sydney; the Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia; and Harvard University.
Bruce is the former co-director of Yale New Haven Hospital’s Adult Ethics Committee, serves on the Pediatric Ethics Committee, and is a member of Yale’s IRBs, reviewing medical research on AI, behavioral studies, and large-scale tissue and data repositories. She has also served on bioethics committees at Harvard, including the Cambridge Health Alliance and the innovative Community Ethics Committee.
Bruce has served on national and state health department steering committees for various topics, including medical orders on life-sustaining treatment and advisory boards for vulnerable populations. She is also the founder and director of the Community Bioethics Forum, which accepts consult requests from policymakers to amplify the voices and values of community members in health and medical policies. This group has examined the ethics of a wide range of policies, including informed consent laws, invasive pediatric procedures by physicians-in-training, end-of-life options for the developmentally disabled, infant safe haven laws, and brain death.
Bruce’s graduate work was in policy analysis, bioethics, and neuroimaging with master’s degrees from Boston University School of Medicine and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She earned her doctorate from the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago.
Her work has been covered on NBC Nightly News and in Time magazine, the New York Times, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Center Report, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, neuroscience journals, and other sources in both academic journals and the popular media.