Written by: Victor Uteshev
The Patient Engagement Research Lab is honored to partner with Dr. Emma Tumilty, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) on a newly funded ethics research supplement funded by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Dr. Tumilty’s career requires her to wear many hats – weekly, she spends time conducting her own research on issues of access and equity in healthcare, mentoring graduate students interested in ethics, and ensuring that patients, families, and healthcare teams have support to navigate ethically challenging situations during a hospital stay. “I love having many types of positive impacts – in the hospital setting when resolving a particular clinical ethics case, in research guiding policy or supporting our diverse community members and in the PhD program helping students and fellows achieve their professional goals,” says Dr. Tumilty.
Drs. Tumilty and Waterman began collaborating in 2023 when Houston Methodist Research Institute began a formal Alliance between UTMB, Texas Southern University, and University of Houston Clear Lake to support a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant application that will, in part, expand community-engaged research across the Houston area. These two didn’t wait for the grant to be funded to start working together, though. They immediately began examining: (1) the ethics of how to apply artificial technology (AI) to the development of risk indices in an unbiased way, and (2) how the transplant center should be supporting obese living donors. “I am so grateful to have access to the sensitive listening and training of an ethicist to study issues that are controversial,” says Dr. Waterman. “I want to innovate quickly while ensuring that we are improving access to healthcare responsibly and ethically.” Their early work has led to abstracts presented at International Conference of Clinical Ethics Consultation in Montreal and The National Student Research Forum. Dr. Tumilty just received NIDDK ethics funding to understand the experiences of obese living donor applicants ruled out because of their body mass index (BMI), in order to affect policy and practices recommendations to ensure better assessment and support.
Dr. Tumilty shares her experience working with the Patient Engagement Research Lab members so far, “I have had the chance to attend meetings in person and online, and there are many times where the group has moments of lightness while still being very thorough and continuing to move the work forward. I have felt welcomed and learned from the many perspectives of those providing input from different disciplines. The Lab as a whole shares many of the same goals, methodologies, and, most importantly for me, values like curiosity, compassion, honesty, a commitment to equity, and the courage to do what’s right, that I strive for in my own work.”
A native of Aotearoa New Zealand, Dr. Tumilty is a person with diverse interests and experiences. She loves exploring Texas with her partner and is deeply passionate about reading, especially stories that imagine different possible futures, a genre called speculative fiction. As a bioethicist, her love for reading often intersects with her professional work. “The imaginative scenarios in speculative fiction often set-up the dilemmas we face in bioethics. On the non-fiction side, I delve into history and politics, which also provide valuable context for my work,“ Dr. Tumilty notes. While doing her PhD in New Zealand, Dr. Tumilty competed in powerlifting, “a challenging yet rewarding experience that taught me the value of discipline and perseverance. She has also had the opportunity to express her creativity and passion for music by playing in a punk band, which was a fun and unique experience,” she recalls. Drs. Tumilty and Waterman are deeply grateful to be working together to build a collaboration that can have significant impact on improving the patient experience… and a whole lot of fun, too.”