Bryanna Moore, PhD

Bryanna Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester, where she also serves as a clinical ethics consultant and directs the Department’s Advanced Certificate Program in Clinical Bioethics. Her research interests span medical decision-making, pediatric ethics, virtue ethics, death studies, and community-engaged practice. Her prior research combines philosophical and qualitative methods to explore parent-clinician conflicts, end-of-life decision-making, and the ethics of social media use and other technologies in healthcare. Her Greenwall project aims to develop ethical guidance for pediatric decision-making that is sensitive to parents’ reasons. She remains particularly interested in the intersection of parental choice and the psychology and structure of moral conflicts. Prof. Moore received her PhD in Philosophy from Monash University and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Children’s Mercy Bioethics Center and Baylor College of Medicine.

For more information, visit https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/people/112364498-bryanna-s-moore

Reasons and the Ethics of Pediatric Decision-Making

Grant Cycle: 2025 - 2026

Most pediatricians and ethicists believe medical and legal systems should evaluate parental choices based on their effect on the child—not the reasons offered by parents. Controversy over the role of parents’ reasons in pediatrics reflects a broader lack of critical reflection on the roles that reasons play in medical decision-making. Guided by two central research questions: “when and how do parents’ reasons impact decision-making?” and “when and how should parents’ reasons influence decision-making?”, this project seeks to develop reasons-sensitive normative guidance to help clinicians engage with parents’ reasons in ways that promote fairness, foster trust, and reduce distress and uncertainty.