Charlene A. Galarneau is a visiting assistant professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College and an ethicist of health care and public health. Before coming to Wellesley in the fall of 2005, she was a member of the faculty at Tufts University in the Community Health Program (1996-2005) and at the Tufts University School of Medicine, Department of Public Health and Family Medicine (1999-2005).

Galarneau’s current primary research focuses on justice in health and health care, specifically the theoretical and practical neglect of the moral significance of communities (local, cultural, religious, etc.). In this book-in-progress, she argues for the inclusion of communities as necessary moral participants in the creation of just health care. Other research interests include liberationist bioethics, participatory democracy, religiously-based medical sharing plans and citizen participation in Canadian health care.

At Wellesley, she teaches courses on feminist bioethics, women and health, and gender justice and health policy. Other recent teaching has ranged widely in the ethics of public health and medicine, community health, women and health, and religion, health and healing. In 2001 she received an Innovative Course Design Award from the Tufts Critical Thinking Program.

Galarneau received a B.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts in an individualized concentration in public health and Spanish. n the late 1970s, after language study in Guatemala, she worked as a health educator with the primarily with Latina/o communities served by Plan de Salud del Valle, a multi-site system of community and migrant health centers in rural northeastern Colorado. Moving into health administration, she continued her work at the state level with the Colorado Community Health Network, a coalition of health-care institutions serving low-income, medically underserved residents. From 1988-1992 she served on the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health (DHHS appointment) and served two years as its vice-president.

These health-care experiences raised important ethical questions about the U.S. health care system and, in particular, about the values embedded in contemporary health policy. Her interest in ethics - both religious and philosophical - led her to an M.A.R. in theology and ethics from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, and then to A.M. and Ph.D. (1998) degrees in religion at Harvard University with a specialization in social ethics and health policy. She received a fellowship in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School (1999-2000) and was a visiting scholar at Episcopal Divinity School (2004-05).

Her professional involvements have included co-chairing the Religion & Ethics in Health Care Group of the American Academy of Religion, participating in education, case consultation and policy-making activities of the Ethics Committee at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and serving as a reviewer for the Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law.

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Profile last updated: 1/07