Drue Barrett
Dr. Drue Barrett is the Lead of the Public Health Ethics and Strategy Unit (PHESU) in the Office of Science, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Chair of the CDC Public Health Ethics Committee (PHEC). PHESU assists CDC scientists with ensuring that their work meets the highest ethical principles and standards of scientific integrity. This includes providing leadership, tools, technical assistance, and training on ethical and regulatory obligations. Her work has included leading the development of a training manual on public health ethics for local health officials and a public health ethics casebook (published as an open access book by Springer Press in April 2016). Dr. Barrett served for many years on CDC's Institutional Review Boards (IRB), and chaired one of the IRBs. Other positions she has held at CDC include Acting Associate Director for Science in the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and Director of the Veterans Health Activity in the National Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Barrett received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1990 from Georgia State University. She also completed two years postdoctoral training in epidemiology and public health through CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service.
Leonard Ortmann
Dr. Leonard Ortmann, a Senior Ethics Consultant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, develops and provides public health ethics training to CDC staff, public health practitioners, and local college students in public health courses. For public health officials, practitioners and students, he co-developed a training manual on public health ethics and a 2018 Springer Press casebook on public health ethics. At CDC, he provides consultation to its various Centers and programs, its Biorepository, Emergency Operation Center, Institutional Biosafety Board, and Gift Review Panel. Dr. Ortmann came to CDC in 2008 asa Public Health Ethics Fellow from Tuskegee University, where he served as Senior Associate for Programs at its National Center for Bioethics. At Tuskegee, he also taught courses in ethics, bioethics, and research ethics and coached their Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl team. Prior to Tuskegee, he taught philosophy at several universities. He is the recipient of a Fulbright grant to conduct research on the relation of science to ethics at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Dr. Ortmann holds B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from Yale College and The Pennsylvania State University, respectively.
Stephanie Larson
Dr. Stephanie Larson is currently a fellow in clinical ethics at the Cleveland Clinic. She is a former Laney Graduate School Fellow and Dean's Teaching Frost Fellow at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque where she taught courses on professional writing and ethics in the School of Public Administration. Dr. Larson received her PhD in English and Bioethics from Emory University. She also holds a B.S. in psychology and B.A. in English from Purdue University with honors and distinction. Interested in interdisciplinary scholarship, Dr. Larson studies the intersection of literature, public health, ethics, and medicine. Her dissertation project, "Hooked: Public Health, Parasites, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the US and Global South," used the case study of twentieth-century hookworm eradication campaigns to propose an exchange between the fields of public health and literature. Dr. Larson has taught courses examining the intersection of public health, ethics, and the humanities at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional level. Dr. Larson's work has been published in Disability Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Clinical Ethics, The Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, and Literature and Medicine.
