Assistant professor of neurology Ben Tolchin, MD, MS will begin a new role as the Inaugural Director of the Yale New Haven Health System Center for Bioethics, effective July 1, 2021.
Dr. Tolchin’s research focuses on functional neurological disorders and epilepsy, and he has won multiple, prestigious awards from national organizations such as the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society, the American Epilepsy Society, the American Academy of Neurology, and the International League Against Epilepsy.
His many, collaborative initiatives to date have prepared him well for his new position. He sits on the American Academy of Neurology’s Guidelines Subcommittee and Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee, as well as on the American Epilepsy Society’s Psychosocial Comorbidities Committee. In an email announcement to Yale New Haven Health, Michael Ivy, MD, YNHH Deputy Chief Medical Officer, observed that Dr. Tolchin served on the Yale New Haven Hospital Ethics Committee and the Yale New Haven Health/Yale School of Medicine Triage Protocol. He also worked with the Connecticut Hospital Association on implementing statewide triage policies, which were recently shared with India’s medical community.
In leading the Center for Bioethics, Dr. Tolchin will pull from this past experience and work closely with Mark Mercurio, MD, MA, director of the Yale School of Medicine Program for Bioethics, as well as with Stephen Latham, JD, PhD and Lori Bruce, MA, MBE, director and associate director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.