Ruth Cecire, MSW, PhD: Policy Analyst, Ethics Policy

Ruth Cecire received her PhD in Religion and Social Ethics from the University of Southern California in 2002. As Policy Analyst, Dr. Cecire assists in the research, development and revision of national VA health care ethics policies. Her academic focus, bioethics and the philosophy of law and punishment, reflected her interest in pre-doctoral health care/criminal justice. Her dissertation, “Capital and Punishment: The Privatization of Prisons in America,” was honored with the program’s 1999 dissertation award.

Prior to joining the Center, Dr. Cecire was a visiting scholar at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Newcomb Center for Research on Women at Tulane University. Her areas of interest have included: the health/punishment interface in correctional health services, inmate participation in clinical research, the question of torture outsourcing and warrants, and the gendered political and ethical implications of bioterrorism.

Dr. Cecire served as Director of the Office of Special Projects for Correctional Health at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. In that capacity she crafted policies and developed programs that addressed systemic deficiencies in communicable disease, mental health and women’s health programming in the New York City correctional system. She served as a strategic planning consultant for the New York City Department of Health’s Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and has been a regular participant at the New York Academy of Medicine’s Center for Urban Bioethics roundtable. She was primary author of the Center’s launching analysis, “Urban Bioethics,” published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, March 2000.