In this session, Douglas Diekema, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington and Director of Education at Seattle Children's Hospital, will discuss the traditional approach to determining when adolescents should have their decisions respected, the evolving understanding of adolescent brain development, and the implications of “brain science” for how we should understand adolescent decisionmaking capacity, particularly as it relates to clinical decision-making, injury prevention, and criminal justice.

Diekema is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine with adjunct appointments in the Departments of Bioethics & Humanities in the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health. He founded the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Research Institute at Seattle Children’s in 2004 and currently serves as its Director of Education. He is the past chair of the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics, past chair of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Subjects Protections (SACHRP) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and a former Board member of the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities. He is currently a member of the FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee. Diekema is the author of numerous scholarly publications in medical ethics and pediatric emergency medicine and an editor of Clinical Ethics in Pediatrics: A Case-based Textbook. He is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center and was honored by the American Academy of Pediatrics as the 2014 recipient of the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence.