Ron Hamel is senior director of ethics for the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA). Previously, he was director of the Department of Clinical Ethics at Lutheran General Hospital-Advocate, Park Ridge, Ill. He also served as senior associate for theology, ethics and clinical practice at the Park Ridge Center in Chicago from 1989-94. He was associate professor of Christian ethics at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., from 1979-89.
Dr. Hamel earned his doctorate in theological ethics from Fordham University, New York. His area of specialization is health care ethics. He has lectured widely to health care professionals, has served on numerous hospital ethics committees, was a member of the Health Care Ethics Commission of the Archdiocese of Chicago, serves as resource ethicist to the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists and is a fellow in the Institute of Medicine of Chicago. He has authored many articles in health care ethics and has edited several books. Among them are Introduction to Christian Ethics: A Reader (Paulist, 1989), A Matter of Principles? (Trinity, 1994), Must We Suffer Our Way to Death? (SMU, 1995), Three Levels of Managed Care (Sheed & Ward, 1997), Making Health Care Decisions: A Catholic Guide (Ligouri, 2006), and Artificial Nutrition and Hydration and the Permanently Unconscious Patient: The Catholic Debate (Georgetown, 2007).
In October 2001, Dr. Hamel received the Kevin O'Rourke award from the Gateway Catholic Ethics Network in St. Louis for his contributions to Catholic health care ethics. He is the principal author of CHA's multimedia resource Harnessing the Promise of Genomics: Resources for Catholic Health Ministry.