As research chair, Herbst will join the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa for four months starting in January 2020. Housed in the Faculty of Law, the Centre is the largest of its kind in Canada and a hub for research across disciplines on relevant problems.

“It still seems a bit unreal that I have this opportunity,” Herbst said. “The opportunity to connect with a such a wide-range of researchers across schools, disciplines, geography and careers is such a joy.”

As chair, Herbst will benefit from exchanges with Centre members from law, social sciences, arts, health sciences, management and medicine. Members work on a broad range of issues, including but not limited to mental health law and policy, medical aid in dying, new technologies, reproductive health, bioethics, rights to health, health systems law and policy, public health policy, global health, Indigenous health, migrant health and aging. She also will have opportunities to network with leading policymakers, jurists, and stakeholders in the nation’s capital.

Herbst will perform research comparing the legal and ethical standards that Canadians and Americans apply to family members or other non-professional caregivers who make health care decisions for people unable to do so themselves.

“I was looking for a way to more formally explore the ethical and legal standards applied in the Canadian health care and social systems to see whether or how they support informal care,” Herbst said. “This opportunity to spend time in the national capital with such a dynamite interdisciplinary faculty will give me a better chance of capturing a more holistic national picture rather than a single province’s approach.”

An expert in bioethics, health law, and professional responsibility, Herbst has a law degree and master’s degree in bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania; a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College; and an LLM from Temple University. In 2014-15, she was selected as one of 10 national fellows in the “Future of Public Health Law Teaching,” a program underwritten by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, where she designed and taught a public health law course for cross-enrollment by law, medical, nursing and social work students.