Innovations in End-of-Life Care
an international journal of leaders in end-of-life care

Bruce Jennings is Senior Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, a prominent research and educational institute that studies ethical and social issues in medicine, the life sciences, and the professions. From 1991 through 1999 he served as executive vice president of The Hastings Center. He also teaches at the Yale University School of Medicine in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. A political scientist by training, Mr. Jennings is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. 1971) and Princeton University (M.A. 1973). He has written and lectured widely on social, educational, and public policy issues.

He grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana where he was born in 1949. He lives with his wife and son in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He is active in local and civic affairs; he is an elected Trustee (D) of the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, where he has also served as the Chair of the Board of Police Commissioners, and a member of the Westchester County Fair Campaign Practices Committee (established by the county League of Women Voters).

At The Hastings Center Mr. Jennings has directed several research projects on the care of the dying, health policy, chronic illness and long-term care, and ethical issues in human genetics. He served as Associate Director of a project that produced the widely cited and influential Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying (1987).

Mr. Jennings has served as a consultant to several governmental and private organizations, including the American Hospital Association, Education Development Center, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Prudential Foundation, the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and Eli Lilly and Company. Mr. Jennings serves on the boards of directors of several national and professional organizations, including the National Hospice Organization, American Health Decisions, the American Association of Bioethics (1994-97), the Association of Politics and the Life Sciences, and the New York State Hospice Association. He also serves on bioethics advisory committees for the following organizations: The Alzheimer's Association, The Episcopal Church of the United States, The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, The National Hospice Organization, and The New York State Hospice Association. In addition, he is a member of ethics committees at the New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, the Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle, NY, the VNA of Hudson Valley in Mt. Kisco, NY, Morningside House in New York City, and St. Cabrini Nursing Home in Dobbs Ferry, NY.

Mr. Jennings has written and edited thirteen books and has published more than one hundred articles on bioethics and public policy issues. His most recent books are The Perversion of Autonomy: the Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society (The Free Press, 1996), Ethical Issues In Hospice Care (Howarth Press, 1997), and Faithful Living, Faithful Dying: Anglican Reflections on End-of-Life Care (Morehouse Press, 2000). He is currently at work on two new books, one on the relationship between bioethics and public policy analysis, and the other on health policy reform in America.

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