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CLP 2024 Program
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Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD, FACLP, DFAPA (she/her/hers)

Director, Center for Bioethics
Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts

Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, MD, JD is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and the Director of the Master of Science in Bioethics Program at Harvard Medical School. She bases her clinical work in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) where she is the director of Law and Ethics at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior, provides medical oversight for the hospital’s inpatient guardianship team, and practices clinical and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Brendel is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Brendel is immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), of which she is a distinguished fellow. Dr. Brendel is also a past president and fellow of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. She is presently in her fifth of a seven-year term on the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) and serves as the Chair of the Massachusetts Medical Society Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards. She has also served on the ethics committees of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Dr. Brendel’s clinical practice has focused on patients with complex psychosocial problems, including trauma, dementia, mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, decisional incapacity, lack of community support, and poverty. This broad work has informed her educational efforts and research interests focusing on issues at the interface of psychiatry, medicine, law, ethics, and human rights.

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