The University of Pittsburgh’s Consortium Ethics Program (CEP) was founded in 1990 with a mission to deliver high quality ethics education to healthcare professionals and assist hospitals and clinics throughout western Pennsylvania and nearby regions in West Virginia and Ohio in developing expertise in clinical ethics.
The groundwork for CEP began four years earlier by the CEP’s founding Director, Rosa Lynn Pinkus, a historian of medicine with appointment at the University of Pittsburgh as Associate Professor in the School of Medicine’s Division of General Internal Medicine and Director of Continuing Education in the Center for Medical Ethics. Between 1987 and 1990, Dr. Pinkus met monthly with the Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania to discern the ethical challenges and training needs that participating hospitals faced, and to develop a plan for providing support and training for existing and planned hospital ethics committees and clinical ethics consultation services.
During its first phase as a pilot education program (1990-1993), the CEP was funded by a grant from the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, with administrative and educational resource support from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Medical Ethics, the Western Psychiatric Institution, and the Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania. Dr. Pinkus led the grant-funded program with support from Dr. Alan Meisel and the teaching expertise of the Center for Medical Ethics, for which Dr. Meisel served as Director.
During this pilot phase, there were four regular CEP staff serving the initial CEP membership of 12 regional hospitals. Dr. Pinkus served as the CEP’s Founding Director and brought in Gretchen Aumann, a nurse, to serve as the CEP’s chief clinical ethicist. Given the increasing membership demands for ethics education and projections for future growth of membership, Dr. Pinkus hired Anne Medsger, a nurse, to evaluate the impact of CEP on ethics services within member hospitals, and Connie Johnston to provide administrative support.
At the end of the pilot period for CEP in 1993, Dr. Pinkus secured a second grant from the Heinz Foundation, with the aim of making CEP a self-sustaining program by 1996. With the success of CEP’s pilot program, the additional funding secured, and the intentional recruitment of regional faculty to the CEP, the CEP reduced its dependence on the Center for Medical Ethics and hired Jody Stockdill to serve as the CEP’s full-time Program Administrator (a role has she has continuously occupied to the present). In 1996, Dr. Pinkus moved the CEP permanently to the Division of General Internal Medicine within the Pitt Department of Medicine, where it is still presently housed. The CEP would continue to draw from the faculty expertise within the Center for Medical Ethics – later renamed the Center for Bioethics & Health Law – in addition to faculty outside the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Mark Kuczewski (at this time, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Associate Director, Consortium Ethics Program; presently Michael I. English, S.J., Professor of Medical Ethics and Director, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics, Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University) provided additional directorial assistance to Dr. Pinkus with program planning and teaching.
In 1998, Dr. Mark Aulisio (then, Research Associate in the Pitt Department of Medicine; presently Susan E. Watson Professor and Chair, Department of Bioethics, Case Western Reserve University and Director, MetroHealth System Center for Biomedical Ethics) assumed the role as Assistant Director of the CEP. As CEP expanded over the next decade and a half, it added new faculty from regional universities and colleges to meet the educational needs of its growing membership. Rhonda Hartman served as Associate Director of the CEP from 2000-2003, succeeded by James Dwyer (2003-2004) and Andrew Thurman (2004-2009).
In 2013, Dr. Pinkus retired from the University of Pittsburgh and appointed Dr. Aviva Katz as the second CEP Director. Dr. Katz was Associate Professor of Medicine at Pitt, pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and bioethicist (Dr. Katz served as chairperson of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics for several years). Under Dr. Katz’s leadership, CEP expanded regionally across Western Virginia and eastern Ohio. It also provided support to Dr. Lisa Parker, who had succeeded Dr. Meisel as Director of the Center for Bioethics and Health Law, who had sought additional assistant from the CEP in organizing the Center’s annual interprofessional ethics conference at Pitt. This collaboration would continue through 2019, after which the Center opted to shift primarily to a virtual, online presence during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Katz passed away suddenly in 2018, with Dr. Parker briefly taking oversight of the CEP before handing the directorship to Maryanne Fello, a longtime participant in CEP programming and former Director of Forbes Hospice. Dr. Carrie Stott, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Carlow University, assumed the CEP Directorship briefly in 2019, followed by Dr. Valerie Satkoske, Vice President of Ethics at UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside Hospital, from 2020 to 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CEP's educational programming moved to virtual format, and the CEP relied on the Center for Bioethics & Health Law's administration and faculty for organizing and planning online events. During this time, the CEP’s programs took on a more academic and conceptual character, influenced by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law’s philosophically-oriented approach to bioethics.
In 2021, Dr. Michael Deem, who had been added to the CEP faculty by Dr. Katz in 2018 and recruited to Pitt as Associate Professor by Dr. Parker in 2021, accepted the role of CEP Director. In 2022, CEP returned to its traditional educational format of annual retreats and thematic workshops, and successfully and safely organized the first CEP retreat since 2018 and its full slate of ethics workshops. The CEP also returned to independent development of in-person and onsite educational programming for its members, with its original focus on practical, clinical ethics and policy.
The CEP continues to be Pitt’s premiere clinical ethics educational program, providing high-quality ethics education and mediation training to its members.