Technical University of Munich
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) leads Work Package 2 (WP2), which focuses on supporting the ethical development and implementation of preventive interventions for childhood obesity through the examination of key Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI).
TUM integrates ethical considerations throughout the duration of the project by actively participating in WP1 and WP6 meetings, maintaining close collaboration with WP5 on clinical trials, and leading activities at the annual Obelisk meeting to encourage all work packages to reflect on potential positive and negative ELSI aspects of their research. The team has conducted a systematic literature review to identify the range of ethical issues raised by childhood obesity interventions. These findings have been presented at an Obelisk training webinar and will inform the specialist policy panel organised by WP6.
To further explore the perspectives of key stakeholders, TUM is conducting qualitative interviews with clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and parents of children involved in the TAPE clinical trial. Drawing on insights from this research, TUM will develop a set of ethical recommendations to be presented as an ELSI-specific policy brief, providing guidance for future policy and research in childhood obesity prevention.
People
PD Dr. Stuart McLennan
Stuart is the Director of Research at the Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine at the Technical University of Munich. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy (with a focus on ethics and moral philosophy), a Master's degree in Bioethics and Health Law (with distinction), a PhD in Biomedical Ethics (with Summa Cum Laude), and in December 2020 he received his Habilitation and Venia docendi in Biomedical Ethics from the Medical Faculty of the University of Basel. His research tends to be highly interdisciplinary and practice-oriented, using the empirical bioethics approach that integrates ethical, legal and policy analysis with empirical methods. His general research focus is on ethical and regulatory issues related to learning health systems, in particular data science and AI in healthcare, patient safety and quality improvement, and clinical research. He is also heavily involved in the development of the new interdisciplinary approach of embedded ethics (EE) to integrate ethical considerations into AI development.
Dr. Paola Buedo
Paola Buedo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Munich Embedded Ethics and Social Science Hub (MESH), Institute for History and Ethics in Medicine, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich.
Paola is a medical doctor with postgraduate studies in bioethics and has been trained in research ethics and bioethics by the Fogarty International Center, the World Health Organization and European Union projects.
Her research focuses on the intersection of bioethics with various fields such as biotechnology, health care and mental health, combining ethical normative analysis with empirical methods.
