2025 Plenary Sessions
Making the Case for Health Equity: Ethical Imperatives and Practical Strategies
Dr. Jerome Adams, MD MPH FASA
Thursday, October 23, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Pacific Time
Health equity is not just a goal—it is a moral and ethical obligation. This presentation explores the ethical foundations of health equity, the structural barriers that perpetuate disparities, and the role of bioethics and the humanities in addressing these challenges. We will examine real-world examples of inequities in healthcare access and outcomes, highlighting evidence-based strategies to advance equity at individual, institutional, and policy levels. Through a multidisciplinary lens, attendees will engage in a critical discussion on how to translate ethical principles into meaningful action.
Why ASBH25? As the Surgeon General from 2017-2021, Dr. Jerome Adams advocated for health equity while guiding the nation through an unprecedented global pandemic, and since 2021, Dr. Adams has served as the first Executive Director of Health Equity Initiatives at Indiana University, advancing his idea that the best public health policies are the ones that “begin at home” and come about as people in local communities work together to find solutions that fit their specific priorities and needs. As an independent, Dr. Adams believes these bottom-up, community-driven approaches can reduce division and recenter public health as a common and universal goal–and help to prepare our nation for future public health challenges. A stalwart defender of vaccines and advocate of health equity initiatives, Dr. Adams will engage with the ASBH community through a fireside chat focusing on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, community-driven public health, and how to prepare for upcoming public health challenges.
A Psychedelic Renaissance: What are We Trying to Recover from the Past?
Dr. Erika Dyck, PhD MA
Saturday, October 25, 10:45 - 11:45 AM Pacific Time
Psychedelics have returned as a topic that invites optimism as well as controversy in the 21st century, particularly as they seem to offer hope in treatment-resistant categories of illness. But their return also raises ethical questions that threaten to undermine efforts to bring substances like MDMA and psilocybin into biomedicine. In this presentation I examine the history of psychedelics and consider what is at stake with the resurgence of interest in psychedelics.
Why ASBH25? Our return to Oregon, the first state in the U.S. to not only decriminalize psilocybin but make it legally regulated and available to the public, invites us to consider the enduring and contemporary ethical dilemmas in psychedelic science. Dr. Erika Dyck's internationally recognized, transdisciplinary work on psychedelics draws upon both history and literature to remind us that today's most pressing ethical questions require expansive analysis across bioethics and health humanities disciplines.