Beza Merid

College Catalyst

College of Global Futures

My interest in Principled Innovation began with a conversation I had about the founding of ASU’s School of Medicine. Genevieve Bautista Young and I had a fascinating discussion about how the university was working to establish the School as a means to address critical health care shortages in Arizona which, of course, is vital and much needed. Beyond this point, however, it was how she described the university’s express interest in centering humanistic inquiry and ethical decision-making in medical pedagogy that drew my attention. Building on my own work on digital health technologies and the pursuit of responsible innovation, I was asked to help work toward this aim by contributing to the development of a framework that explores the values and commitments necessary to practice Principled Innovation in Health.

My research program is motivated by an interest in understanding the situated and context-specific drivers of health inequities, so the opportunity to help develop an interventional framework that is responsive to the specific needs of Arizonans is appealing. Likewise, given my own appointment as a faculty member in the College of Global Futures, the remit to consider what it means to help promote health at both the local and planetary levels presents an exciting set of challenges. I look forward to the work we will do to articulate our vision, and to detail the moral, civic, and performance pathways that learners in the College of Global Futures and within ASU Health can follow toward these ends.