UW-Madison ethicist receives national honor

Norman Fost, who founded one of the nation’s first medical school programs in medical ethics, has received one of the nation’s most prestigious awards in the field.

Fost, professor of pediatrics at the UW Medical School, was awarded the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence. The honor is given annually to recognize a person or group with a significant impact on public discussion of ethical issues in pediatric medicine.

The Bartholome Award is given by the Bioethics Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Founded in 1930, the AAP has approximately 57,000 members dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. The bioethics section was created in 1988 and promotes the importance of compassionate, sensitive and ethical conduct in health care.

Fost joined the UW Medical School faculty in 1973 and established the program in medical ethics, one of the first such interdisciplinary programs in the nation. His national reputation in bioethics stems from years of work on diverse and controversial topics — from genetic testing to clinical research ethics, from “right to die” cases to the question of human cloning. A practicing pediatrician, Fost has also chaired the ethics committee at UW Hospital for many years as well as the Institutional Review Board. He also continues to head the hospital’s child protection team.

Earlier this year, Fost’s expertise in research ethics was recognized when he was appointed to the board of the Partnership for Human Research Protection (PHRP), created jointly by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The PHRP provides a national set of standards and an accreditation process to keep volunteer research subjects informed and protected.

The Bartholome Award is named for the late William G. Bartholome, a Kansas City pediatrician and ethicist nationally known as an advocate for the rights of children in health care. Fost received the award at the AAP National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans.