The Center for Practical Bioethics is a nonprofit, free-standing and independent organization nationally recognized for its work. Since 1984, the Center has helped patients, families, healthcare professionals, policymakers and corporate leaders grapple with ethically complex issues in medicine and research.  

Our mission - to raise and respond to ethical issues in health and healthcare - requires us to be proactive. To call attention to ethical issues and to develop programs, policies and publications that address them and achieve common ground. The results? Reasoned, real-world responses to ethically complex situations and, ultimately, improved health outcomes and peace of mind.   

The Center's work is led by staff representing multiple disciplines and a variety of expertise and supported by a committed Board of Directors. Focus areas in 2021 include:

ETHICS EDUCATION & CONSULTATION - Services include: bioethics education for clinicians and students; ethics consultation services in hospitals and health systems, and ethics guidance in response to calls from individuals to policy leaders. We also lead the KC Regional Ethics Committee Consortium, present community lectures and symposia, and publish and archive a Bioethics Library of 4,000 items that receive 750,000 pageviews/year.

ADVANCE CARE PLANNING & SERIOUS ILLNESS - The Center helps thousands each year to prepare for the uncertainties of advancing illness and to make their end-of-life wishes known through advance care planning. We are also building coalitions and training providers across Missouri and Kansas in adoption of a form that translates patient goals of care into physician orders that follow the patient.

EMERGING ISSUES AND SYSTEMS CHANGE - Current focus areas: Population Health & Deliberative Democracy, Artificial Intelligence, and PAINS-KC.