Allison M. McCarthy, Ph.D.

Allison M. McCarthy, Ph.D. is Core Faculty with the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, starting 2021. She completed a Ph.D. in Philosophy at The Ohio State University in 2018. From 2019-2021, she completed a two-year clinical ethics fellowship at UCLA Health Ethics Center.

Her research examines the concepts of paternalism and autonomy that have shaped modern medical ethics, with special focus on the ethical ideal of shared medical decision-making, its implications for the professional-patient relationship, and its application for special patient populations. She also has particular interest in the intersection of medicine and intellectual/developmental disability, especially in relation to the care and medical decision-making of I/DD patients.