Elizabeth Heitman, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Ethics and the Program in Ethics in Science and Medicine.  Her work focuses on cultural aspects of ethics in clinical medicine, biomedical science, and public health, particularly international standards of research ethics and education in the responsible conduct of research (RCR).  She teaches research ethics and RCR in the Center for Translational Medicine and is an ethics facilitator for medical students.

Dr. Heitman is Co-director of the NIH Fogarty International Center-sponsored Collaborative Research Ethics Education Program between Mozambique’s Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and UT Southwestern, and a Co-Investigator and Mentor on the NHLBI-sponsored research training grants Obesity Health Disparities PRIDE and Jackson Heart Study Graduate Training and Education Center with the University of Mississippi Medical Center.  

Dr. Heitman is recently completed her second term as a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Life Sciences (BLS), and served on its Standing Committee on Educational Institutes for Teaching Responsible Science.  With the National Academies, she has promoted the international teaching of responsible science through faculty development projects in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Dr. Heitman came to UT Southwestern in late 2016 from Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, where she was a member of the Academy for Excellence in Teaching and served as a clinical ethics consultant and chair of the Ethics Committee.  She was previously on the faculty the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas and was clinical ethicist at Hermann Hospital and Lyndon Baines Johnson General Hospital.

Dr. Heitman received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies in 1988 from Rice University’s joint program in biomedical ethics with the University of Texas – Houston Health Science Center.