D. Micah Hester is Associate Director of the Division of Medical Humanities and Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Pediatrics at UAMS, as well as clinical ethicist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH).  Dr. Hester’s duties at UAMS include acting as course director of the sophomore medical students’ medical ethics, serving on numerous university committees, and working on scholarly research in bioethical/philosophical areas.  At ACH he serves as an ethics educator/consultant.  He also remains active in local, regional, and national professional activities.

Dr. Hester’s scholarship has resulted in the publication of several authored and edited books as well as numerous journal articles (click here for an abbreviated list).  His latest book is Ethics By Committee (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), a textbook for the education of members of hospital ethics committees.  He has published a Community As Healing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) which develops a pragmatist ethic for physician-patient relationship.  A co-authored (w/Robert Talisse) book, On James (Wadsworth, 2004), explains the philosophical aspects of the thought of the pragmatist William James.  He has also edited volumes in computer ethics, the logic of John Dewey, and the idealism of William Earnest Hocking.  Some of Dr. Hester’s publications can be found in leading bioethics journals, such as the American Journal of Bioethics, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and the Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.  His current research is leading towards the publication of a book on end-of-life care ethics.

Dr. Hester coordinates the Pediatric Ethics Consortium (a national professional initiative to promote pediatric ethics scholarship and education) as well as the Pediatric Ethics Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.