The Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University edical Center announced the selection of Ann Neale, Ph.D., on Sept. 1 as a senior research scholar. Her work will focus on policy research and ethical issues surrounding human experimentation.

Neale earned a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown in 1976. She was then appointed as first executive director of the Committee for Human Values, an office that represented the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the areas of science, technology and values. Neale also served as the special assistant to the Office of Technology Assessment under Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and as an ethicist for The National Center for Health Care Technology, part of the Surgeon General’s office that oversees technological assessments for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Neale has served on the boards of the American Society of Christian Ethics, the Dallas Mercy Health System, the Churches Center for Theology and Public Policy, the Maryland Hospital Education Institute and Bayard House in Wilmington, Delaware. She was also a member of Health and Human Services Secretary Califano’s Advisory Committee on the Rights and Responsibilities of Women, Maryland Gov. Harry Roe Hughes’ Organ Transplant Study Commission and the National Institute of Health’s Consensus Advisory Panel on Infant Apnea and Home onitoring. Neale is currently on the board of Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby, and the Center for Ethics and Advocacy in Health Care, a community-based health care support system.

For 15 years, Neale worked in the mission department of two Catholic health systems as vice president: Bon Secours Health System in Baltimore and Franciscan Health System in Aston, Pa. Some of her responsibilities included mission, clinical and organizational ethics, advocacy and socially responsible investing. She has also worked extensively for health care reform.

Neale is returning to Georgetown from St. Louis, Mo., where she served as a senior associate for ethics in the Mission Services Department of the Catholic Health Association and had an adjunct faculty appointment in the Center for Health Care Ethics at the St. Louis University Health Sciences Center.