Creating Trusted Messengers as a Moral Imperative of High School Bioethics Education

Abstract: Our high school bioethics project, housed within an academic medical center, believes that students interested in healthcare careers should have a firm and early grounding in medical and other STEM-related ethics. During an intensive summer internship program, students receive this grounding through interactive class sessions. In the current climate of mis- and disinformation, trust has become an emerging ethical theme that cuts across all fields within bioethics, but especially STEM. Americans’ trust in science and medicine is at all time low, and the consequences are staggering. To earn trust and save lives, it is not enough for clinicians and allied health professionals to be ethical practitioners; patients will need to perceive them as such. Over the past several months, the high school project began to emphasize how embodying trust is a moral component of STEM education in its internship and mentoring programs. For example, the project partnered with a non-partisan nonprofit organization that works to promote trust in healthcare and science and challenge false information. This collaboration has informed how the high school project teaches students to identify misinformation and address future patient healthcare concerns in sensitive, culturally competent ways, proven pathways to gaining trust. This presentation will discuss how notions of morality and trustworthiness can be conveyed to younger bioethics students in methods appropriate to their ages and learning capabilities. It will share teaching resources (readings, videos) and curricula designed to lay a STEM-focused bioethical foundation that incorporates the crucial components of developing trusted messages and messengers.

Keywords: Bioethics education, Trustworthiness, STEM-related bioethics