2023 Greenwall Foundation Year in Review

As the year winds down to a close, we reflect on a rewarding, productive year here at The Greenwall Foundation. We embarked on new projects, refined existing initiatives, and celebrated the achievements of those who contribute to making the Foundation community the vibrant, dynamic collective that it is.

In January, Faculty Scholar Alum Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, PhD, spearheaded the launch of the Philosophical Bioethics Hub, funded by a Foundation grant, which is an expansive home for bioethics resources, that builds on a seminar series that has been a part of Greenwall’s Faculty Scholars Program for nearly a decade.

Two cycles of Making a Difference grants were awarded—one in the Spring, one in the Fall—promising impactful projects that will significantly influence health policy and practice. In the Spring, we also announced the latest members of our Faculty Scholars Program community—Faith Fletcher, PhD, Brendan Saloner, PhD, and Lauren Taylor, PhD—as that Program enters its third decade.

We launched an updated website in May, with new features and content that reflects both our growth in recent years and priorities in the years to come. Among this new content is an articulation of how values of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion inform the way we approach our work at the Foundation.

In the Summer months, the Foundation held a webinar called Beyond COVID: The Broader Reach of Bioethics Research from the Pandemic, bringing together three Making a Difference grantees to share their takeaways from research conducted in the COVID-19 context. (We encourage you to join the audience of 18,000-plus who viewed the webinar’s recording on YouTube!)

In June and July, we celebrated a flurry of leadership milestones for the Foundation. Our Board elected Ann Alpers, JD, as its new Chair, and Phyllis Meadows, PhD, MSN, RN, as its Vice Chair. We were also delighted to welcome Keith Wailoo, PhD, to the Board as its newest member. The Board was also pleased to renew the contract of Michelle Groman, JD, as the Foundation’s President & CEO.

Lisa Harris, MD, PhD, received the 2023 Bernard Lo, MD Award in Bioethics, which recognized her pioneering work in bridging divides across the challenging landscape of reproductive health. Be sure to stay tuned for the 2024 Request for Nominations for this Award, which will be announced soon. 

And as the Summer came to a close, we were excited to be a part of the announcement of Sanket Dhruva, MD, as the newest Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics at the National Academy of Medicine.

As classrooms began to fill up again in the Fall, we continued to undertake exciting work. The Foundation made an appearance in a booth at the 2023 American Society for Bioethics and Humanities conference in Baltimore, where we were delighted to see so many friends of the Foundation, old and new. If you were on site, you likely caught wind of playing god?, a new podcast funded in partby Greenwall and produced by a partnership between the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and Pushkin Industries.

September brought the announcement of the awardees of our second year of our Bridging Bioethics Research & Policymaking grants, which bring a unique approach to efforts to effect policy change.

In October, we took time to step back and take stock of the Making a Difference program, following ten years of supporting innovative research. The next month, we held the 2023 William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture, titled Can Mental Health Save the World? The conversation, a discussion between psychiatrist and public health expert Gary Belkin, PhD, and NPR reporter Michel Martin, was a fascinating exploration of the way community building will play a role in building the mental health landscape needed to take on climate change. You can watch the full Lecture on YouTube.

Throughout the year, the Greenwall community remained active, contributing to bioethics conversations through publications, commentary, writing, podcasting, and more. Grantees and Faculty Scholars published over three hundred academic papers, featured in over one hundred news publications, and appeared as guests or hosts on more than two dozen podcasts. 

We extend our gratitude for being part of our community this year, and we eagerly anticipate what 2024 holds in store.