A significant amount of my career has been devoted to minority health and bioethics. I’ve led the NIH-funded Tuskegee Legacy Project, a major study that seeked to determine the impact of the infamous 40-year Tuskegee Syphilis Study run by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932-72 on the reluctance of African-Americans to participate in biomedical research. The findings from the TLP research team resulted in 17 scientific publications and one book, The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. All of them found no difference in willingness to participate in biomedical research between African-Americans and Whites post-TSS. All through this, I was also a member of the National Tuskegee Legacy Committee that advised former U.S. president Clinton on his presidential apology for Tuskegee in 1997, and I am currently on the External Board of Advisors to the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University, which was created by Clinton in 1997. While at NYU Abu Dhabi, I’m serving a semester on sabbatical from my role work at the NYU School of Dentistry Bioethics Department.

My recent research is largely informed by my experience as a professor of bioethics at NYU. In my classes, I use historical examples of bioethical violations, such as the infamous USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, as a framework to delve into the whys and wherefores of these ethical transgressions in the pursuit of knowledge. With time, I noticed students’ reactions to readings were markedly different from their reactions to documentary films such as Bad Blood, which tells the story of the TSS. Thus, as part of a team led by myself and my son, Amos E. Katz, Lecturer and Technical Manager of the Arts and Media at NYUAD, we are now seeking to answer two questions: Is teaching about epidemiological studies on human subjects enhanced by showing films in addition to readings? If so, what aspects of bioethics are better taught via film as opposed to via traditional text readings?

This is the essence of the Spheres of Ethics Teaching Using Film Project. We want to develop a questionnaire to measure and differentiate between emotions and thoughts that result from film- or text-trigger exposures addressing ethical and bioethical issues. In order to do this, we have developed a multidisciplinary and multilayered team. The team is composed of NYU faculty, external consultants and NYUAD students to ensure that wide sets of expertise and experiences go into the construction of the research questionnaire. Spanning across the visual arts, language arts, bioethics expertise and questionnaire development expertise, the team members include Dr. Rueben Warren, Professor Michele Shedlin, Professor Michael Dinwiddie, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Mr. Nigel Holmes, Ms. Barbara J. Frey, and five NYUAD students: Hala Aqel, Annie Bauer, Jacob Chagnon, Daniil Ilin and Peter Si.

Initial online searches by experienced academic librarians failed to identify any specific research instrument or questionnaire that had been developed in the past to address the issue. Thus, Phase I of the SOETUF Project, which will end in December, focuses on developing the preliminary SOETUF Questionnaire. Phase II, initiating in Spring 2016, will undertake beta-testing activities and final refinement of the SOETUF Questionnaire as well as the identification of the specific trigger films and text passages that students will be exposed to prior to the administration of the SOETUF Questionnaire. Finally, Phase III, which will take place in Fall 2016, will consist of a cross-cultural administration of the SOETUF Questionnaire to both urban and rural high school students in the United States and the UAE.

At the onset of the investigation, the most that can be said is that the SOETUF project addresses a relevant question that apparently has not been investigated before. The NYUAD Research Program deemed the concept interesting and worthwhile and provided funding for a pilot investigation. If the findings of the SOETUF Project are positive and interesting, future plans call for using this pilot study and seeking external funds to broaden and deepen future related research questions that continue investigating the most effective use of text and film in the teaching of ethics and bioethics as related to health research.