Julius Landwirth

served as Associate Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics from 2002-2010. His interest in applied clinical ethics was sparked by his early experience as co-director of a then unique multi-disciplinary clinic for children with multiple congenital malformations at Yale in the mid 1960’s. As Director of the Department of Pediatrics at Bridgeport Hospital in the 1970’s (where he laid the foundation for the current Yale affiliation), he inaugurated a monthly hospital-wide session on medical ethics with Jay Katz. Later on, while serving as Director of Pediatrics at Hartford Hospital and associate chair of the academic department at UConn, he founded, and for 15 years chaired, the hospital ethics committee. Following “retirement” in 1996 he worked in the international arena under contract with the Open Society Institute organizing public health education programs in the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union, taking the opportunity to open up exploration of previously taboo issues in health care ethics. While at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, his areas of interest have been research ethics and public health ethics. As chair of the Public Health Ethics working group, he forged a collaboration with the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness and the Connecticut Department of Public Health to assist in the development of guidelines for altered standards of care during public health emergencies. That group has recently embarked on a study of ethical aspects of planning for community resiliency to the effects of climate change on public health.