We’re thrilled to announce that Leah Pierson, PhD, has been selected from a competitive pool of applicants as the recipient of the 2023 Sissela Bok Ethics and Population Research Prize. Leah is currently a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, and recently completed her PhD in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research focuses on ethical issues in public health, and in particular, those related to priority setting. Her dissertation, Ethics Amidst Uncertainty: Essays on Global Health Priority Setting, focused on the challenges that global health actors face when it comes to setting priorities, namely the uncertainties about: the efficacy of different policies and interventions; the future; and what one morally ought to do. Leah plans to use the cash prize to build on this work, focusing on the kinds of processes we should use to make priority-setting decisions. In addition to her academic work, she aims to communicate about bioethical issues to non-bioethicists through a podcast she co-hosts, Bio(un)ethical, and by writing op-eds and perspective pieces. Before beginning her MD/PhD, Leah received a BA in human rights from Brown University, and completed a pre-doctoral fellowship in the NIH Department of Bioethics.
Announcing the winner of the 2023 Sissela Bok Ethics and Population Research Prize
