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Category: Bioethics (Velasco Suárez)

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The Manuel Velasco Suárez Award for Excellence in Bioethics was created in 2002 to promote the study and research of bioethics in the region. As a discipline in health with moral implications extending to highly diverse areas, bioethics seeks to humanize and mediate the headlong advance of science, technology, and global development based on the interaction and dialogue between experts and lay people. Bioethics and human rights, important dimensions of biomedical humanities, have become an aspect of critical importance in the biomedical and social sciences, health care, and public health. The Manuel Velasco Suárez Award aims to stimulate young scholars in the development of their capacities for bioethical analysis.

The Secretary of Health of Mexico and the Pan American Health and Education Foundation, in cooperation with Pan American Health Organization, created this award to honor Dr. Manuel Velasco Suárez, a Mexican national, who was a physician, researcher, and scholar. With more than 50 years dedicated to public health, he helped develop many important initiatives and was a founder of the Mexican Academy of Bioethics. Over the past ten years, the award has achieved recognition as one of the most prestigious honors in the field of bioethics in our region. In addition to the prizes received by all awardees, Manuel Velasco Suárez Award winners also receive a medal from the Velasco Suárez family.

Watch an interview with Dr. Juan Alberto Lecaros Urzúa, the 2012 award recipient (in Spanish):

The award is one of six in the PAHO/PAHEF Awards for Excellence in Inter-American Public Health Program, which was established in 1975.