Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster
The Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster at SMU has spent the last several years examining the intersection of healthcare, ethics, and society, focusing on concepts like compassion, responsibility, and human flourishing. Through public lectures, interdisciplinary discussions, and scholarly engagement, the cluster has explored how moral and political values shape healthcare practices and institutions.
A key influence in these discussions has been Dr. Joshua Hordern, Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford, whose scholarship on compassion in healthcare provided a foundational framework for the cluster’s work. His book Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life was a central text in 2022-2023, guiding discussions on the ethical tensions between modern medical systems and human-centered care. Hordern’s April 2023 visit to SMU was a major milestone for the cluster, as he led conversations on the ways healthcare professionals grapple with fundamental questions of human dignity, responsibility, and justice in clinical settings.
Building on these themes, in Fall 2024, the cluster organized a lecture series that examined three key models of healthcare relationships: the patient-as-citizen, patient-as-consumer, and physician-as-innovator. These discussions explored the political and social implications of each model and later incorporated reflections on the role of generative AI in clinical decision-making.
Most recently, in February 2025, the cluster hosted Dr. Brian Brock for the 2025 Scott Hawkins Lecture, where he examined artificial intelligence and ethical intelligence—continuing the research cluster’s focus on the ethical challenges of medical technology.
Through its ongoing work, the Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster remains committed to fostering critical conversations on the moral foundations of healthcare, the political and social structures that shape medical practice, and the emerging ethical dilemmas of 21st-century medicine.
Conveners
Rita Kirk
Dr. Kirk is the William F. May Endowed Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and professor of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs. Her passions for aligning resources with innovation, empowering ideas, and building coalitions in order to successfully implement strategic initiatives are hallmarks of her work.
Dallas Gingles
More Information About Healthcare and Human Flourishing
Healthcare and Health of the Public Spring 2025
On February 13, 2025, the Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster welcomed Dr. Brian Brock, Professor of Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen, for the 2025 Scott Hawkins Lecture at 91制片廠合集.
"Artificial Intelligence: Metaphor Use and Ethical Intelligence"
Event Details:
Date: February 13, 2025
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Kirby Parlor at Kirby Hall
Lecture Abstract:
Developed societies are technological societies in which it is assumed that technological progress is the motor of social and economic progress. Artificial intelligence promises radically changes in the functioning of these societies. One ethical problem associated with this development is a descriptive one: how should we describe what artificial intelligence is and what it does? Contested descriptions will yield radically different proposals for responsible ethical handling of these technologies. The key problem, this talk will propose, is finding a way to resist automating our ethical decision-making processes.
About Dr. Brian Brock: Brian Brock holds a personal Chair in Moral and Practical Theology. He joined the University of Aberdeen in 2004, following postdoctoral studies at the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg and a doctorate in Christian ethics at King’s College London. He is originally from Texas.
Brian is the author of Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ; Christian Ethics in a Technological Age; and Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture, along with many other books, edited volumes, and articles.
Healthcare and the Health of the Public Fall 2024
Building on two years of research on the relationship between healthcare and moral and political concepts like compassion and responsibility, the DCIl research cluster "Healthcare and the Health of the Public" convened a series of public lectures and workshops on the physician/patient relationship. SMU has been an important home for research on this topic for at least two generations, dating back to the work of the inaugural Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, William F. May.
In the fall, the series focused on three models—the patient-as-citizen, the patient-as-consumer, and the physician-as-innovator—examining their social and political implications. In the spring, discussions explored how, if at all, the emergence of generative AI in the clinical setting impacted these and other models.
Fall 2024 Meeting Schedule
All meetings were held in Kirby Parlor at 5:00 pm.
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Tuesday, September 24: Patient-as-Citizen
Lecturer: Dallas Gingles, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Practice in Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Perkins School of Theology, and Co-Convener of the "Healthcare and the Health of the Public” Research Cluster at 91制片廠合集 -
Monday, October 14: Patient-as-Consumer, Physician-as-Provider
Lecturer: Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Faith and Learning, Associate Professor of Ethics, Faith & Culture, Truett Theological Seminary, and Affiliate Professor of Management, Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University -
Tuesday, October 29: The Physician as Innovator? Examining Professional Identity and Practice Amidst Technological Advances
Lecturer: Ashley Moyse, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Director of Columbia Character Cooperatives at Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
Healthcare and the Health of the Public 2023-2024
The DCII discussion group on “Healthcare and Human Flourishing” continued to explore the value propositions of our social institutions, which began during Spring 2023. As with last year’s sessions on compassion and healthcare, these interdisciplinary discussions considered the interaction between essential social institutions, basic moral ideas, and the larger society that supported these essential functions and advanced or limited their moral aspirations. To reflect this emphasis, the group was renamed “Healthcare and the Health of the Public.”
The discussion last year focused on healthcare practices and institutions, drawing on Joshua Hordern’s book Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life. This text allowed participants to consider the different ways that societies designed their healthcare systems to strike a balance between the systemic requirements of modern medicine, the value of compassion, and the political and social principles on which society was organized.
The group continued thinking about healthcare in 2024 but also welcomed reflections on the relations between human flourishing and other disciplines, including law, business, and – certainly relevant to the context – higher education. To go beyond the focus on compassion, the consideration expanded to include the values and virtues of responsibility and hope.
Toward these goals, participants were requested to read and consider two books, both of which were provided free of charge to the first 20 participants:
– Wendy Brown, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values). Harvard University Press, 2023.
– Michael Lamb, A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Participants were asked to email the Maguire Ethics Center to confirm their attendance and schedule a time to pick up their books.
These two works by distinguished contemporary scholars provided a thoughtful introduction to the modern and resolutely secular thoughts of Max Weber, and to Augustine’s classical and Christian reflections on virtue. Together, authors Brown and Lamb helped participants to read two authors who were highly influential in their own troubled times and relate those observations to the questions of society today. The group hoped to continue exploring the connections between the social institutions essential to human flourishing, the values and virtues those institutions required, and how these disciplinary requirements could be integrated into the structures of society as a whole.
The meeting format this semester was slightly different than last year. Each of the four sessions met at 4:00 pm for wine and light refreshments, after which Dr. Robin Lovin gave a lecture focused on the social theory that made virtues like responsibility and hope intelligible to -- and influential for -- flourishing modern societies. There was plenty of time for discussion and Q&A after the lectures, and the meetings concluded by 5:30 pm, after which there was time for additional informal discussion. All meetings took place in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, room 220.
The meeting schedule was as follows:
–Tuesday, February 6th – Discussion of part one of Nihilistic Times. Dr. Robin Lovin provided an introduction to the book and the discussion.
–Tuesday, March 5th – Lecture on Marx and Durkheim.
–Tuesday, April 2nd – Lecture on Weber.
–Tuesday, April 30th – Synthetic/Constructive Lecture.
Dr. Hordern talked to the group about how individuals in healthcare are forced to reckon with very basic questions about the good. What is a human? How does our account of human dignity fit into our overall understanding of the universe (is it a dignity that stands out in relief against the canvas of an infinite and meaningless universe; is it a dignity that is perfectly integrated into a meaningful universe that is created and loved by God?). It is in these institutions that we are required to be honest about the beliefs we hold most deeply even when—or especially because—we are committed to cordoning off some of these beliefs in our official political life, in order to build and maintain the conditions for a reasonable and just pluralistic constitutional democracy.
Keynote Speaker: Rev. Prof. Joshua Hordern
Joshua Hordern is Professor of Christian Ethics in the Faculty of Theology and Religion and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford. He is also an ordained minister in the Church of England. He has worked extensively with colleagues in healthcare on themes such as compassion in healthcare, medical professionalism, vaccine hesitancy and precision medicine. Publications include Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Advancing Medical Professionalism (Royal College of Physicians, 2018).
About Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life
gives an account of the nature and content of compassion and its role in healthcare. The argument considers how and why contested beliefs about political life, suffering, the human condition, time, and responsibility make a difference to ‘compassion’. While compassion appears to be a straightforward aspect of life and practice, the appearance is deceptive. Compassion is plagued by both conceptual and practical ills and needs some quite specific kinds of therapy. The first step therefore is to diagnose precisely what is wrong with ‘compassion’ including its debilitating political entanglements, the vagueness of its meaning and the risk of burn-out it threatens. With diagnosis in hand, three therapies are prescribed for compassion’s ills: (i) an understanding of patients and healthcare workers as those who pass through the life-course, encountering each other as wayfarers and pilgrims; (ii) a grasp of the nature of compassion in healthcare; and (iii) an embedding of healthcare within the realities of civic life. With this therapy applied, the argument shows how compassionate relationships acquire their content in healthcare practice. First, the form that compassion takes is shown to depend on how different doctrines of time, tragedy, salvation, responsibility, fault, and theodicy set the terms of people’s lives and relationships. Second, how such compassion matters to practice and policy is worked out in the detail of healthcare professionalism, marketisation, and technology, drawing on the author’s collaborations. Covering everything from conception to old age, and from machine learning to religious diversity, this book draws on philosophy, theology, and everyday experience to stretch the imagination of what compassion might mean in healthcare practice.
Interested in working with the Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster?
The Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster is open to participants from any and all disciplines and departments at SMU and also welcomes participants from other universities and the broader DFW community. Email Maguire Ethics Center program coordinator Rylee Bailey at rbbailey@smu.edu or call the Ethics Center at 214-768-4255 to learn more about how you can get involved!
Check the Ethics Center's website periodically for updates regarding Healthcare and Human Flourishing Research Cluster events and meetings.