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Donna Chen

Donna T. Chen, M.D., M.P.H

Donna Chen portrait photoProfessor
C
enter for Health Humanities and Ethics,
Department of Public Health Sciences,
Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences

As a physician with advanced training and expertise in consultation-liaison psychiatry, bioethics/health humanities, clinical and public health research, and health policy, Dr. Chen sees herself as a translational physician-ethicist. In addition to her role as Core Faculty in the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, she is a Full Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. Dr. Chen teaches, consults, conducts research, and provides service in bioethics/research ethics, medical education, and psychiatry institutionally, nationally, and internationally. More recently, she is also focusing on the role of the arts in medical education and in promoting health and human flourishing. Since 2009, Dr. Chen has led the Ethics, Professionalism, and Health Humanities curricular thread for the four-year medical student core curriculum at UVA SOM.   Dr. Chen received the Psychiatry Department Faculty Teaching Award in 2006; the SOM Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2011, and University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award in 2021.

Over her professional career, Dr. Chen has had the privilege of engaging with many groups of people — teaching, mentoring, consulting, and learning with undergraduate/graduate students, practicing professionals, clinical and basic scientists, and communities of “non-academics.” An award-winning educator, Dr. Chen aims always to instill an appreciation for listening to the people we care for and work with, asking good questions, and seeking answers that are practical, relevant, and honor important ethical and humanistic values. In academic settings, she has (co)designed and (team-)taught interdisciplinary courses, workshops, and continuing education programs bringing together people from medicine, public health, nursing, clinical and basic sciences, law, business, education, data science, engineering, and various arts and sciences disciplines. In community-academic partnered settings, she strives to help communities achieve their goals while also contributing to the academic mission of learning and disseminating new knowledge.

Dr. Chen’s scholarly work addresses questions in clinical and research ethics – largely related to the clinical neurosciences, patient care, and community-partnered and interdisciplinary team science; professional and organizational ethics; and ethics and health humanities education as ways to ensure that future physicians continue to embody important ethical values and pay humanistic attention to patients and families as our health systems undergo complex societal challenges. This work aims to advance knowledge through conceptual analyses and empirical research, which in turn helps guide developments in ethics/health humanities practice, education, policy and normative understandings.

Over the years, Dr. Chen has consulted to researchers, policy-makers, and educational leaders at institutions in the US and abroad and served on committees related to ethics and health humanities, community-engagement, interdisciplinary team science, education, and mentorship including for the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institute for Drug Abuse, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of the Surgeon General, National Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Consortium, Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru).

She has served UVA School of Medicine on the Curriculum Committee, Faculty Affairs & Development Advisory Committee (FADAC), Academic Standards & Achievement Committee (ASAC), Center for Excellence in Education’s Innovation Committee, and chaired the Medical Student Advocacy Committee. She is a member of the UVAHealth Ethics Committee and the Ethics Consult Service. She chaired the SOM’s Research Ethics Committee until it merged into the University-wide programs for research ethics and integrity and has consulted to the UVA Senior Associate Vice President for Research Integrity and the UVA IRB for Health Sciences Research. She served the University as a Faculty Senator representing the School of Medicine for over 12 years with service to the Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Committee, Faculty Grievance Committee, and the Research, Teaching, & Scholarship Committee as well as on the Provost’s Committee on University Libraries, the UVA President’s Working Group on Response to Sexual Violence, and as a reviewer for the UVA Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards. From 2017-2022, she served as Bioethics Lead for the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia (iTHRIV) and Curriculum Director for the iTHRIV Scholars Program, its early-career research faculty development program, supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health Awards UL1TR003015/ KL2TR003016.

In April 2022, Donna had a stroke and learned that she has been living with a rare condition called Moyamoya. Her ongoing recovery process has rekindled her love for the creative arts, particularly working with clay, and her appreciation for the power of art to guide and sustain her in exploring vulnerability, making meaning, and learning to flourish while immersed in uncertainty from a patient perspective. Embracing both the personal and the professional potential of the arts and humanities, she is collaborating with a host of stakeholders to create the UVA Center for Health Humanities and Ethics FusionLab initiative – the Center’s FusionLab initiative aims to bring together practicing clinicians and artists, community partners, students, scholars, and scientists for collaborative education and research efforts to promote human flourishing and advance humanistic care by future healthcare professionals as they negotiate the complex ecosystems they will encounter in their quest to care for their patients.

Education and Training

B.A., Independent Major in Social Sciences (an early precursor to the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major). College of Letters and Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. Awarded High Honors in Major and Highest Distinction in General Scholarship, Elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Focus: Ethical, Political, and Social Aspects of Health and Medicine. Honors thesis: I Challenge Thee: an analysis of the current movement in medical ethics as an example of the ever-present struggle over authority in medicine (Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars Award #FI-21019-87)

M.P.H., School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
M.D., School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Chief Resident. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University/ New York State Psychiatric Institute. New York, New York (Internship and Residency in the Clinical/Research Track).
Fellow. Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. University of Virginia. Charlottesville, Virginia
Post-doctoral Fellow in Bioethics. Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health. Bethesda, Maryland.
Clinical and Research Fellow in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. National Institute of Mental Health. Bethesda, Maryland.
Scholar and Faculty. Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in Health Professions. Boston, Massachusetts

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Recent Publications:

A list of published work is available at NCBI’s MyBibliography.

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Bosack E, Bourne D, Epstein E, Marshall MF, Chen DT. Investigating Moral Distress in Clinical Research Professionals-A Deep Dive into Troubled Waters. Ethics Hum Res. 2025 Jan-Feb;47(1):34-45.

Kurker KP, Chen DT. Embodying performance excellence in medicine: Can The Six Viewpoints help?. Med Teach. 2024 Sep;46(9):1137-1139.

Shepherd L, Chen D. Medical Research without Consent? It’s Like Deja Vu All Over Again. 99 Indiana Law Journal 933 (2024). 2024; 99(3):933-1014.

Chen D, Shepherd L. Is There a Doctor in the House?. Am J Bioeth. 2023 Aug;23(8):47-50.

Chen DT, Shepherd L, Taylor J, Marshall MF. Who will receive the last ventilator: why COVID-19 policies should not prioritise healthcare workers. J Med Ethics. 2021 Sep;47(9):599-602.

Dzara K, Chen DT, Haidet P, Murray H, Tackett S, Chisolm MS. The Effective Use of Videos in Medical Education. Acad Med. 2020 Jun;95(6):970.

Lewin LO, McManamon A, Stein MTO, Chen DT. Minding the Form That Transforms: Using Kegan’s Model of Adult Development to Understand Personal and Professional Identity Formation in Medicine. Acad Med. 2019 Sep;94(9):1299-1304.

Chen, D., Shepherd, L., Muse, E., Johnston, A., “What Medical Students Teach:  The Healing Skill of Being a Team Player,” Hastings Center Report 2019; 49(5): 38-47.

Chen W, McCollum MA, Bradley EB, Nathan BR, Chen DT, Worden MK. Using Instrument-Guided Team Reflection and Debriefing to Cultivate Teamwork Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes in Pre-Clerkship Learning Teams. Med Sci Educ. 2019 Mar;29(1):45-50.

Chen DT, Ko TM, Allen AA, Bonnie RJ, Suratt CE, Appelbaum PS, Nunes EV, Friedmann PD, Lee JD, Gordon MS, McDonald R, Wilson D, Boney TY, Murphy SM, O’Brien CP. Personal Control Over Decisions to Participate in Research by Persons With Histories of Both Substance Use Disorders and Criminal Justice Supervision. J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics. 2018 Apr;13(2):160-172.

Allen AA, Chen DT, Bonnie RJ, Ko TM, Suratt CE, Lee JD, Friedmann PD, Gordon M, McDonald R, Murphy SM, Boney TY, Nunes EV, O’Brien CP.  Assessing informed consent in an opioid relapse prevention study with adults under current or recent criminal justice supervision.  J Subst Abuse Treat. 2017 Oct;81:66-72.

Murphy SM, Polsky D, Lee JD, Friedmann PD, Kinlock TW, Nunes EV, Bonnie RJ, Gordon M, Chen DT, Boney TY, O’Brien CP. Cost-effectiveness of extended release naltrexone to prevent relapse among criminal justice-involved individuals with a history of opioid use disorder. Addiction. 2017 Aug;112(8):1440-1450.

Ponce Martinez C, Suratt CE, Chen DT. Cases That Haunt Us: The Rashomon Effect and Moral Distress on the Consult Service. Psychosomatics. 2017 Mar – Apr;58(2):191-196.

Chen W, McCollum M, Bradley E, Chen DT. Shared team leadership training through pre-clerkship team-based learning. Med Educ. 2016 Nov;50(11):1148-1149.

Lee JD, Friedmann PD, Kinlock TW, Nunes EV, Boney TY, Hoskinson RA Jr, Wilson D, McDonald R, Rotrosen J, Gourevitch MN, Gordon M, Fishman M, Chen DT, Bonnie RJ, Cornish JW, Murphy SM, O’Brien CP. Extended-Release Naltrexone to Prevent Opioid Relapse in Criminal Justice Offenders. N Engl J Med. 2016 Mar 31;374(13):1232-42.

Childress MD, Chen DT. Art and Alzheimer dementia: a museum experience for patients may benefit medical students. Neurology. 2015 Aug 25;85(8):663-4.

Lee JD, Friedmann PD, Boney TY, Hoskinson RA Jr, McDonald R, Gordon M, Fishman M, Chen DT, Bonnie RJ, Kinlock TW, Nunes EV, Cornish JW, O’Brien CP. Extended-release naltrexone to prevent relapse among opioid dependent, criminal justice system involved adults: rationale and design of a randomized controlled effectiveness trial. Contemp Clin Trials. 2015 Mar;41:110-7.

Majersik JJ, Cole JW, Golledge J, Rost NS, Chan YF, Gurol ME, Lindgren AG, Woo D, Fernandez-Cadenas I, Chen DT, Thijs V, Worrall BB, Kamal A, Bentley P, Wardlaw JM, Ruigrok YM, Battey TW, Schmidt R, Montaner J, Giese AK, Roquer J, Jiménez-Conde J, Lee C, Ay H, Martin JJ, Rosand J, Maguire J. Recommendations from the international stroke genetics consortium, part 1: standardized phenotypic data collection. Stroke. 2015 Jan;46(1):279-84.

Chen DT, Green SA, McCollum MA. Practising standardised team communication in the anatomy laboratory. Med Educ. 2014 Nov;48(11):1109-10.

Beach SR, Chen DT, Huffman JC. Attitudes and beliefs of trainees and nurses regarding delirium in the intensive care unit. Acad Psychiatry. 2013 Nov;37(6):436-8.

McCollum M, Bradley E, Chen D. Developing a team orientation through team-level reflection and feedback. Med Educ. 2013 Nov;47(11):1136.

Beach SR, Chen DT, Huffman JC. Educational impact of a psychiatric liaison in the medical intensive care unit: effects on attitudes and beliefs of trainees and nurses regarding delirium. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2013;15(3).

Shepherd LL, Read K, Chen DT. Children enrolled in parents’ research: a uniquely vulnerable group in need of oversight and protection. IRB. 2013 May-Jun;35(3):1-8.

Bookman EB, Din-Lovinescu C, Worrall BB, Manolio TA, Bennett SN, Laurie C, Mirel DB, Doheny KF, Anderson GL, Wehr K, Weinshilboum R, Chen DT. Incidental genetic findings in randomized clinical trials: recommendations from the Genomics and Randomized Trials Network (GARNET). Genome Med. 2013;5(1):7.

Chen DT, Shepherd LL, Becker DM. The HPV vaccine and parental consent. Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. 2012; 14(1):5-12.

Chen DT, Shepherd LL. Advising patients about obtaining genomic profiles. Neurol Clin Pract. 2011 Dec;1(1):5-13.

Chen DT. Perspective taking and advance directives. Virtual Mentor. 2010 Nov 1;12(11):893-7.

Chen DT, Wynia MK, Moloney RM, Alexander GC. U.S. physician knowledge of the FDA-approved indications and evidence base for commonly prescribed drugs: results of a national survey. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2009 Nov;18(11):1094-100.

Chen DT, Shepherd LL. When, why, and how to conduct research in child and adolescent psychiatry: practical and ethical considerations. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2009 Jun;32(2):361-80.

Chen DT. Why surrogate consent is important: a role for data in refining ethics policy and practice. Neurology. 2008 Nov 11;71(20):1562-3.

Chen DT, Meschia JF, Brott TG, Brown RD, Worrall BB. Stroke genetic research and adults with impaired decision-making capacity: a survey of IRB and investigator practices. Stroke. 2008 Oct;39(10):2732-5.

Chen DT, Mills AE, Werhane PH. Tools for tomorrow’s health care system: a systems-informed mental model, moral imagination, and physicians’ professionalism. Acad Med. 2008 Aug;83(8):723-32.

Chung B, Jones L, Campbell LX, Glover H, Gelberg L, Chen DT. National recommendations for enhancing the conduct of ethical health research with human participants in post-disaster situations. Ethn Dis. 2008 Summer;18(3):378-83.

Chen DT, Case LD, Brott TG, Brown RD Jr, Silliman SL, Meschia JF, Worrall BB. Impact of restricting enrollment in stroke genetics research to adults able to provide informed consent. Stroke. 2008 Mar;39(3):831-7.

Chen DT, Mills AE. Addressing Ethical Commitments When Professionals Partner with Organizations. McGeorge L. Rev.. 2008; 39(3):719-739.

Chen DT, Moreno JD. Ethics of medication-free research in schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 2006 Apr;32(2):307-9.

Chen DT, Worrall BB. Practice-based clinical research and ethical decision making–Part I: deciding whether to incorporate practice-based research into your clinical practice. Semin Neurol. 2006 Feb;26(1):131-9.

Chen DT, Worrall BB. Practice-based clinical research and ethical decision making–Part II: deciding whether to host a particular research study in your practice. Semin Neurol. 2006 Feb;26(1):140-7.

Chen DT, Jones L, Gelberg L. Ethics of clinical research within a community-academic partnered participatory framework. Ethn Dis. 2006 Winter;16(1 Suppl 1):S118-35.

Worrall BB, Chen DT, Dimberg EL. Should thrombolysis be given to a stroke patient refusing therapy due to profound anosognosia?. Neurology. 2005 Aug 9;65(3):500; author reply 500.

Worrall BB, Chen DT, Brown RD Jr, Brott TG, Meschia JF. A survey of the SWISS researchers on the impact of sibling privacy protections on pedigree recruitment. Neuroepidemiology. 2005;25(1):32-41.

Chen DT, Rosenstein DL, Muthappan P, Hilsenbeck SG, Miller FG, Emanuel EJ, Wendler D. Research with stored biological samples: what do research participants want?. Arch Intern Med. 2005 Mar 28;165(6):652-5.

Chen DT, Worrall BB, Brown RD Jr, Brott TG, Kissela BM, Olson TS, Rich SS, Meschia JF. The impact of privacy protections on recruitment in a multicenter stroke genetics study. Neurology. 2005 Feb 22;64(4):721-4.

Mills A, Chen D, Werhane P, Wynia M. Professionalism in Tomorrow’s Healthcare System: Towards Fulfilling the ACGME Requirements for Systems-Based Practice and Professionalism (book). Hagerstown MD: University Publishing Group. 2005.

Chen DT. Curricular approaches to research ethics training for psychiatric investigators. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2003 Dec;171(1):112-9.

Chen DT, Miller FG, Rosenstein DL. Clinical research and the physician-patient relationship. Ann Intern Med. 2003 Apr 15;138(8):669-72.

Chen DT, Miller FG, Rosenstein DL. Ethical aspects of research into the etiology of autism. Ment Retard Dev Disabil Res Rev. 2003;9(1):48-53.

Chen DT, Miller FG, Rosenstein DL. Enrolling decisionally impaired adults in clinical research. Med Care. 2002 Sep;40(9 Suppl):V20-9.

Worrall BB, Chen DT, Meschia JF. Ethical and methodological issues in pedigree stroke research. Stroke. 2001 Jun;32(6):1242-9.

Chen DT, Worrall BB, Meschia JF. Protecting the privacy of family members in research. JAMA. 2001 Apr 18;285(15):1961-3.

Dembling BP, Chen DT, Vachon L. Life expectancy and causes of death in a population treated for serious mental illness. Psychiatr Serv. 1999 Aug;50(8):1036-42.

Chen DT, Blank MB, Worrall BB. Defending telepsychiatry. Psychiatr Serv. 1999 Feb;50(2):266; author reply 267-8.

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