William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture: Ethics in America’s Epidemic: Navigating Solutions and Hope in the Opioid Crisis

Announcing the 2024 William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture—Ethics in America’s Epidemic: Navigating Solutions and Hope in the Opioid Crisis

Opioid use and the addiction that can follow have, in recent decades, become an enduring and profound public health crisis. How did this problem reach epidemic proportions, and where does it stand today? What tensions define debates about how to mitigate the drugs’ harms? How can we most effectively treat addiction, especially in light of stigma and disparities? And how can we begin to repair communities that these drugs have impacted?

On November 19, 2024, The Greenwall Foundation and New York University’s School of Global Public Health will host this year’s William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture in person in New York City and online. Beth Macy, bestselling author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, will discuss the US opioid epidemic and the ethical issues that accompany it, including how we can move forward from the crisis and rebuild affected communities. Ms. Macy will be joined in conversation by Perri Peltz, a journalist, public health advocate, and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker known for the HBO documentary Warning: This Drug May Kill You, which explores the devastating effects of opioid addiction and its relationship to big pharma.

William C. Stubing served as President of The Greenwall Foundation for 21 years. In 2016, the Foundation established the William C. Stubing Memorial Lecture in honor of its beloved former President, who guided the Foundation to its current focus on bioethics. Previous Lectures have covered timely topics in bioethics: climate change and mental health, automation and inequity in healthcare, the public health and ethical challenges of COVID-19, the social inequities revealed by the pandemic, physician aid-in-dying, drug pricing, and genome editing.