Nancy Berlinger
Ph.D.
Research Scholar
Download CV for Nancy Berlinger
Nancy Berlinger is a Hastings Center research scholar whose work focuses on two major themes: ethical and societal challenges arising from population aging, and the role of health practitioners, systems, and policymakers in the care and well-being of migrants. These themes reflect her longstanding interests in decision-making and care concerning serious illness and near the end of life; safety and harm in health systems; and the moral dimensions of care work. She publishes, presents, and speaks to the media frequently on topics within these themes. She is the lead author of The Hastings Center’s Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions Responding to Covid-19 and of related pandemic guidance for professionals, organizations, and policymakers.
Nancy Berlinger’s aging-focused projects include “Dementia and the Ethics of Choosing When to Die”; “Living Alone at Home with Dementia: Ethical Considerations for Inclusion,” and “Bioethics for Aging Societies: Informing Policy and Practice.” Her current migration-focused work includes “Creating Systems of Safety for Immigrant Health” and related collaborations with clinician-investigators, and the Undocumented Patients public database and resources. She served on the Planning Committee for the 2018 National Academy of Medicine Workshop on Physician-Assisted Death. She directed the revision of The Hastings Center’s landmark Guidelines on treatment decision-making and end-of-life care and collaborated with the Society of Hospital Medicine to develop a primary palliative care pathway for serious illness communication. With colleagues at the National University of Singapore and the University of Oxford, she co-developed the open-access Singapore Bioethics Casebook. She was a 2018 resident at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation for a book project on migration and urbanism. She serves on the Bioethics Committee of Montefiore Medical Center (Bronx, NY) and on Montefiore’s Ethics Review Committees on hospice access for patients alone, and teaches at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Nancy Berlinger is a graduate of Smith College and received a doctorate in English literature from the University of Glasgow and a master of divinity, with a focus on ethics, from Union Theological Seminary.
Selected Covid-19 guidance, commentaries, and training tools
N. Berlinger et al. Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions Responding to Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). The Hastings Center. March 16, 2020.
N. Berlinger et al. Responding to Covid-19 as a Regional Public Health Challenge, Preliminary Guidelines for Regional Collaboration Involving Hospitals. Supplement to Ethical Framework. The Hastings Center, April 29, 2020.
Ethics Work Group. Public Health Competence Network for COVID-19. Public Health Ethics and Covid-19: The ethical dimensions of public health decision-making during a pandemic. April 22, 2020.
M. Gary and N. Berlinger. “Interdependent Citizens: The Ethics of Care in Pandemic Recovery.” Hastings Center Report. May-June 2020. (In press)
N. Berlinger. “Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery.” Bioethics Forum. April 23, 2020. Updated May 28, 2020.
B. Wills and N. Berlinger. “Covid-19 Update: Essential Resources on Immigrant Health.” The Hastings Center. April 22, 2020.
N. Berlinger et. al. “COVID-19: Supporting Ethical Care and Responding to Moral Distress in a Public Health Emergency.” Slide Deck Training Tool. The Hastings Center. March 24, 2020.
N. Berlinger. “COVID-19: Supporting Ethical Care and Responding to Workforce Concerns in a Public Health Emergency.” Webinar. Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program. April 22, 2020.
Selected commentaries
Population aging, medical decision-making
“With No Dementia Cure in Sight, It’s Time for Communities to Become Dementia Friendly.” STAT News, August 14, 2019. Read here
“The Ethics of Population Aging: Precarity, Justice, and Choice.” Health Affairs Blog, June 27, 2019. Read here
Immigrant health, safety and harm in health systems
“‘Getting Creative’: From Workarounds to Sustainable Solutions for Immigrant Health Care.” Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics 47, no. 3 (2019): 409-11. Read abstract here
“More Than Just Sanctuary, Migrants Need Social Citizenship,” Aeon, August 29, 2017. Read here
Selected scholarly publications
Population aging, medical decision-making
Nancy Berlinger, Kate de Medeiros, and Mildred Z. Solomon, eds., “What Makes a Good Life in Late Life? Citizenship and Justice in Aging Societies,” Hastings Center Report 48, no. 5 (2018): special supplement. Read full text here Read Introduction here
Robert Truog, Nancy Berlinger, Rachel L. Zacharias, and Mildred Z. Solomon, eds., “Defining Death: Organ Transplantation and the Fifty-Year Legacy of the Harvard Report on Brain Death.” Hastings Center Report 48, no. 6 (2018): special supplement. Read full text here Read Introduction here
Susan M. Wolf, Nancy Berlinger, and Bruce Jennings, “40 Years of Work on End-of-Life Care – From Patients’ Rights to Systemic Reform,” NEJM 372; 7 (2015): 678-82. Read here
Nancy Berlinger, Ray Barfield, and Alan R. Fleischman, “Facing Persistent Challenges in Pediatric Decision-Making: New Hastings Center Guidelines,” Pediatrics 132:5 (2013): 789-91. Read here
Immigrant health, safety and harm in health systems
Jacqueline L. Angel and Nancy Berlinger, “The Trump Administration’s Assault on Health and Social Programs: Potential Consequences for Older Hispanics,” Journal of Aging and Social Policy 30:3-4 (2018):300-315. Read abstract here
Lilia Cervantes, Stacy Fischer, Nancy Berlinger, et al., “The Illness Experience of Undocumented Immigrants with End-stage Renal Disease,” JAMA Internal Medicine 177, no. 4 (2017): 529-535. Read here
N Berlinger and R Raghavan, “The Ethics of Advocacy for Undocumented Patients,” Hastings Center Report 43, no.1 (2013): 14-17. Read abstract here
Selected policy recommendations
Population aging, medical decision-making
Public symposium: “Aging in (a) Place: Planning, Design & Spatial Justice in Aging Societies,” Harvard Graduate School of Design, October 18, 2019. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in partnership with The Hastings Center. Agenda and videos here
Jacqueline J. Chin, Michael C. Dunn, Nancy Berlinger, and Michael K. Gusmano, “Good Care at Home for Older People in Singapore,” Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, 2017 Read here
Wendy G. Anderson, Nancy Berlinger, Julia Ragland, et al., “Hospital-Based Prognosis and Goals of Care Discussions with Seriously Ill Patients: A Pathway to Integrate a Key Primary Palliative Care Process into the Workflow of Hospitalist Physicians and their Teams.” Society of Hospital Medicine and The Hastings Center, 2017. Read here
Immigrant health, safety and harm in health systems
Nancy Berlinger, Claudia Calhoon, Michael K. Gusmano, and Jacqueline Vimo, “Undocumented Patients and Access to Health Care in New York City: Identifying Fair, Effective, and Sustainable Local Policy Solutions: Report and Recommendations to the Office of the Mayor of New York City,” The Hastings Center and the New York Immigration Coalition, April 2015. Read here
Books
Nancy Berlinger, Are Workarounds Ethical? Managing Moral Problems in Health Care Systems (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Nancy Berlinger, Bruce Jennings, and Susan M. Wolf, The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life: Revised and Expanded Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2013; Japanese translation, 2016).
Nancy Berlinger, After Harm: Medical Error and the Ethics of Forgiveness (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
Jacqueline J. Chin, Nancy Berlinger, Michael C. Dunn, Calvin W-L. Ho, Michael K. Gusmano, eds., Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families: A Singapore Casebook (National University of Singapore, January 2014) Read here
Jacqueline J. Chin, Nancy Berlinger, Michael C. Dunn, Michael K. Gusmano, eds., Caring for Older People in an Aging Society: A Singapore Bioethics Casebook, Volume II (National University of Singapore, May 2017) Read here
Posts by Nancy Berlinger
- Bioethics Forum Essay
Thinking Beyond “The Border”: American Bioethics and the Repair of U.S. Immigration Policy
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayHow should the American bioethics community respond to the latest “crisis at the border,” focused on record numbers of unaccompanied minors – children and teenagers traveling from the Northern Triangle of Central America without parents or guardians — presenting at border crossings along...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity
Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Three Lessons from Leah
Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayBefore there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe novel coronavirus pandemic has starkly revealed the vulnerabilities of low-wage immigrants, immigrant-led households, and immigrant communities to coronavirus infection, severe Covid-19 illness, and economic fallout from pandemic. This public health emergency compounds pre-existing social inequa...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Immigrant Health in the Public Charge Era: 15 Essential Articles
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe public charge rule went into effect nationwide yesterday, formalizing the “public charge era” that began when the draft rule was leaked three years ago. The rule jeopardizes eligibility for legal permanent residency if applicants are deemed public charges based on even short-term use of federally funded programs, such as health insurance, housing subsidies, or food stamps. Anticipation of the rule has had chilling effects on the behavior of immigrants, who have avoided or withdrawn from health-related programs for which they are eligible. What follows is a selected bibliography designed to support learning and progress on immigrant health in a complex policy environment.Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Live-Tweeting About Dying: Last Lessons from Kathy Brandt
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayKathy Brandt, a leader in the hospice and palliative care movement in the United States, died on August 4. She was 53 and had been diagnosed with a rare, highly aggressive form of ovarian cancer in January. Brandt and her wife regularly posted on social media about their family's end-of-life experiences.Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
From Outcry to Solidarity with Migrants: What Is the Good We Can Do?
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayAnother June. Another public outcry about cruelty as policy harming migrants in United States custody. This summer, the photo of a drowned family, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, of El Salvador, shocks the conscience. Reporters are documenting the inhumane conditions in a Border Patrol facility where hundreds of children have been held. How should our field respond?Read the Post
Related Posts
The Hastings Center Bioethics Timeline
Read the Post“Bioethics” has been defined in several different ways. Most broadly, it is the interdisciplinary study of ethical, legal, and social issues arising in the life sciences and health care. Though it has roots tracing back decades or generations earlier, modern bioethics is widely held to have aris...Read the Post- Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes First Sadler Scholars
Read the Post Sadler Scholars
Read the PostThe Importance of Bioethics for Our Contemporary and Near Future World
Read the PostEthics of Workarounds in Health Care with Hastings Center Scholar Nancy Berlinger
Read the PostThe Montgomery Lectures series addresses diverse topics within bioethics and the medical humanities. Presenters are faculty, affiliates, and alumni of the Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program–along with a few special guests. The lectures run every Thursday from noon to 12:45pm du...Read the Post- In the Media
Nancy Berlinger Calls for Communities to Become “Dementia-Friendly”
Read the PostIn the MediaWith no treatment or cure for dementia in sight, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger writes in Stat about what communities around the world are doing to become more welcoming of people with dementia and their caregivers. Berlinger directs the Center's Bioethics for Aging Societies: Informing Policy and Practice project.Read the Post - Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar Nancy Berlinger Selected for Bellagio Center Residency
Read the PostHastings Center NewsResearch Scholar Nancy Berlinger is doing original research at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center on the shores of Lake Como, Italy, as part of a selective academic writing residency. The Bellagio Center supports senior level policy-makers, nonprofit leaders, and others whose work promotes hu...Read the Post - In the Media
Nancy Berlinger in The Atlantic on Patient’s “DNR” Tattoo
Read the Post - Hastings Center News
Nancy Berlinger Co-Authors Palliative Care Recommendations
Read the PostHastings Center NewsHastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger is an author of a new policy statement on palliative care issued by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. The statement makes recommendations on how to reduce barriers that prevent many patients with heart disease and stroke from ...Read the Post
