Bioethics Services

We offer a full range of bioethics services, including ethics consultations, education and community engagement. Our ethics consultants work with faculty, staff, trainees, patients and families throughout CHLA and the greater community.

The Center for Bioethics has four major focus areas, with an emphasis on ethics scholarship and education in each area. The focus areas are:

Clinical Ethics

Clinical Ethics supports CHLA faculty, patients and families when it comes to patient care. We help you through uncertainty or conflict about medical decisions. This initiative gives everyone within the CHLA network access to bioethics consultations as a resource.

Clinical ethics consult service

We are available to provide clinical ethics consults 24/7, every day of the year. Our on-call ethics consultant can meet virtually, in the hospital or at outpatient clinics.

Common reasons to request an ethics consult include:

  • Disagreements about medical care between the health care team and family, between a patient and family, or between members of the health care team
  • Moral distress or ethical concern about situations out of your control
  • Uncertainty about the right course of action

A consult with us helps lead to ethically sound decisions. We can:

  • Facilitate communication and understanding among those involved
  • Explain and analyze ethical issues
  • Give clear and reasonable recommendations for moving forward

Request a clinical ethics consult

Patients or family members can request an ethics consult by:

  • Asking your care provider to contact us
  • Calling 323-660-2450 and asking to connect with the on-call ethics consultant

Ethics Resource Committee

The Center for Bioethics team leads CHLA’s Ethics Resource Committee, a diverse group of medical faculty, staff, parents and community representatives. The Ethics Resource Committee works to:

  • Develop and maintain hospital policies for ethical matters
  • Serve as a resource for ethics education
  • Ensure high-quality clinical ethics consults

Find more bioethics patient and family resources.

Research Ethics

Our team supports researchers, investigators and the Institutional Review Board at The Saban Research Institute. We help the hospital’s research community sort through complex questions about conducting ethical research. These questions may address:

  • Balancing duties to research participants and the public
  • Ensuring fair research participation and access for disadvantaged or vulnerable populations
  • How and when other people may access or use research findings
  • Minimizing or justifying risk to research participants
  • Rights and responsibilities of research participants

Research ethics services

At any stage of clinical or translational research, we provide:

  • Ethics consults
  • Ethical expertise when requested by CHLA’s Institutional Review Board
  • Open dialogue about ethical issues related to research within the scientific or public community
  • Research ethics education

Responsible Conduct of Research course

Center Director Sabrina Derrington, MD, MA, HEC-C, leads the Responsible Conduct of Research course for CHLA. Dr. Derrington directs this course in collaboration with the Office of Training, Education, Career Planning and Development (TECPAD) and The Saban Research Institute.

The course covers ethical research practices. We welcome all participants, including research faculty, staff and fellows at The Saban Research Institute and the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Organizational Ethics

The Center supports hospital administration, faculty and staff through our Organizational Ethics initiative. We advise and educate staff on bioethical issues relating to hospital policies, practices and program development.  
We participate in key committees and work with faculty, staff and hospital leadership. Our team members offer bioethics expertise for topics such as:

  • Leadership decisions
  • Organizational policies and procedures
  • Project development and execution

Learn more about bioethics for medical professionals at CHLA.

Community Ethics

Our Community Ethics initiative engages with the community surrounding CHLA for ethics education programs, advocacy and health policy development. We are developing partnerships with community organizations, local policy makers and other health care providers in the region.

Working toward health equity

Health equity is achieved when everyone has the opportunity to live the healthiest life possible. We aim to examine and pursue health disparities affecting the care of our patients and pediatric health priorities.

Health disparities are influenced by racism and discrimination within the health care system. Structural disadvantage outside the health system also affects the conditions in which children live, learn, grow and develop.

We are currently building a network within CHLA and in collaboration with community partners, public health systems and CHLA patients and families. We all work toward ensuring just and equitable care. Each child should have the ability to flourish and have as healthy a life as possible.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

In collaboration with CHLA’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we study bias and discrimination in health care. We want to create safer spaces for people to identify and address any unfairness as it happens. As part of this work, we hope to empower patients, families, providers, researchers and community members with tools to address bias and improve health outcomes.

Bioethics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

We offer a range of bioethics services for patients, families, providers and researchers. Learn more about our bioethics patient and family resources.