Bruce Jennings

I studied political science and philosophy at Yale and Princeton Universities and taught for five years on the faculty of Richard Stockton College. In 1980 I joined the staff of The Hastings Center, a nonprofit research and educational institute, and built a career in the interdisciplinary field of bioethics over the next 26 years. I have written and edited thirty one books and have published approximately 300 articles on bioethics and public policy issues. In 2006 I joined the staff of the Center for Humans and Nature, which focuses on environmental ethics and policy. Overall, during the last decade my work has attempted to bridge the domains of bio-medical ethics, environmental ethics, and public health ethics. I have also attempted to bring together ethical theory (how things should be) and practice (how things are and can be changed).

With my family I lived for many years in the small village of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. I became active in local governance and civic life, and between 2000 and 2015 I served as an elected village trustee and worked on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and land use planning issues.

Currently I am on the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where I work on ethical issues in public health and the health effects of global climate change. I remain active at the Center for Humans and Nature as a developmental editor for its publications and as a Senior Fellow. I also remain active at The Hastings Center where I now serve as a Fellow and Senior Advisor. From 1991 through 1999, I was the Executive Director and Executive Vice President of The Hastings Center.

In 2011 I was named Editor-in-Chief of the new 4th edition of Bioethics (formerly the Encyclopedia of Bioethics) 6 vols. (Macmillan Reference, 2014), a standard reference work in the field of bioethics. I also served as an associate editor of The Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene 5 vols. (Elsevier, 2017).

I have been very active in the development of the field of public health ethics. I taught one of the first courses on that subject in the United States at the Yale School of Public Health from 1995-2014. From 2003-2009 I served as member and Chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From 2017-2019 I was chair of the American Public Health Association (APHA) task force charged with writing a new code of ethics for Public Health. With many colleagues, I wrote that document, and it was officially adopted by the APHA in 2019. In 2020 I received a Distinguished Career Award from the American Public Health Association for my work in public health ethics.

For more information about my current work visit my website: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/brucejennings

Some of my articles and book chapters are available for download

on ResearchGate at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bruce_Jennings/publications

on Academia at: https://humansandnature.academia.edu/BruceJennings

on the Social Science Research Network at: http://ssrn.com/author=1865373