2026-2027 Undergraduate Catalog
Bioethics Certificate
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The School of Public Health undergraduate Certificate in Bioethics offers a practical, interdisciplinary, and in-depth exploration of bioethical issues for undergraduate students with a particular focus on public health ethics, medical ethics, and research ethics. As a student in this 18-credit certificate program, you will acquire translatable skills required to analyze and resolve a wide breadth of ethical issues applicable to a variety of health care environments such as public health, community health, acute care, home care/hospice care/palliative care, human subjects research, long-term care, rehabilitation, and private practice.
The certificate focuses on ethical, legal and societal issues in population health and individual health including health equity (particularly in relation to at-risk populations), end-of-life decision making, informed consent, decision-making capacity, confidentiality and privacy, organ donation, religious and cultural implications in health and medicine, conflict resolution, human subjects research and distribution of scarce resources.
This certificate will likely be of interest to public health, pre-med, and pre-health students. The Bioethics Certificate is approved by the Frederick Honors College to satisfy the curricular requirements for the Honors Degree and Honors Distinction.
Contact Information
Certificate Director
3139 PUBHL
130 DeSoto St.
412-383-1732
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Required Courses (13 Credits)
Students must achieve at least a 2.0 (C) average in the overall certificate requirements.
Elective Courses (3 Credits)
These 3 additional elective credits could be in public health, arts and sciences, rehabilitation sciences or nursing and should be courses that relate to the student’s career focus or particular area of interest, including but not limited to population health, religious and cultural issues in health/medicine, global health and health issues faced by individuals from populations who are at-risk for discrimination.
A list of approved courses is below. The certificate allows for classes to be added at the discretion of the leadership of the Bioethics Certificate. The process also allows for students to propose additional courses that have not yet been formally added to the list. Please contact Dr. McCarthy to initiate this process.
Bioethics Certificate Approved Elective Courses
Capstone Experience (2 Credits)
The Capstone: Bioethics Certificate will include practical experiences and an in-depth ethical exploration. For the in-depth ethical exploration, students will have the option of completing either a practicum* where bioethics issues can be observed (any experience where the student will be providing or observing patient care services in an individualized, community, public health, or research setting), or an independent study related to bioethics (any project, directed research, independent study, or study abroad experience with a focused end-result related to bioethics).
*BSPH students interested in using the Bioethics Capstone to fulfill the BSPH Capstone requirement must complete an independent study.
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