Charlene’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, Charlene 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.

Charlene Galarneau received her BS degree from the University of Massachusetts in an individualized concentration in Public Health and Spanish. In the late 1970s, after language study in Guatemala, Charlene 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. Charlene’s 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. Charlene received a Fellowship in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School (1999-2000) and was a Visiting Scholar at Episcopal Divinity School (2004-05).

Charlene’s 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.

Select Publications

• Galarneau, C. Communities and Justice in Health Care (book length
  manuscript in preparation).
  
  
• Galarneau, C. “Consumer Sponsored Health Care Plans: Early 20thC Public
  Participation in U.S. Health Care,” in Acting Civically eds. Susan A.
  Ostrander and Kent E. Portney (Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press,
  2007).
  
  
• Galarneau, C. A. “Health and Medicine,” in Encyclopedia of Spiritual and Religious
  Development eds. Elizabeth M. Dowling, & W. George Scarlett (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006).
  
  
• Galarneau, C. “Religion/Spirituality and Medicine” Resource Database
  (online), Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine
  Project, Tufts University School of Medicine, 2003.
  
  
• Galarneau, C. “Health Care as a Community Good: Many Dimensions,
  Many Communities, Many Views of Justice” Hastings Center Report
  (2002) 32, no. 5: 33-40. (pdf)
  
  
  Recent Presentations
  
  

• American Public Health Association, ‘FDA Blood Donation Policy: Bad
  Policy Begets “Bad Blood,”’ (paper) [Dec 2005]
  
  
• American Academy of Religion, “Christian Medical Sharing Plans: An
  Ethical Review,” (paper) [Nov 2005]
  
  
• VI Annual Swedish Symposium on Biomedicine, Ethics and Society titled
  “Just Health Care?,” sponsored by the Centre for Bioethics at Karolinksa
  Institutet & Uppsala University, “Citizen Participation in Just Canadian Health
  Care,” (paper) 2004