UTMB Institute for Humanities wins major national award

The Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has been awarded the prestigious Cornerstone Award from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.

The award recognizes outstanding contributions that have helped shape the direction of the fields of bioethics and medical humanities. It has only been awarded twice before: to the Hastings Center in upstate New York and to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

"We are immensely honored," said the institute's director, Dr. Howard Brody, in a news release. "And I am so proud of our faculty whose dedication and resolve are unparalleled. This award recognizes the influence that our center has had on the fields of medical humanities and bioethics since it was founded in 1973."

The award will be formally presented at the annual meeting of the national society in Washington, D.C., this October.

"This is a tremendous recognition," added Dr. Cary Cooper, interim provost and dean of the graduate school of biomedical sciences at UTMB. "This is an absolute testament to the great work that the institute does at UTMB and for the nation."

The Institute for the Medical Humanities at UTMB is an interdisciplinary group studying and teaching history of medicine, bioethics, literature and medicine, religion and health, visual arts in medicine, social medicine and health law and policy and also awards the only Ph.D. in the country in interdisciplinary medical humanities.