WHAT DOES NINTH MONTH CONSULTS DO?
Ninth Month Consults is an independent 501c3 bioethics consultation practice housed in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The purpose of the organization is to support, locate and provide resources for screen projects to enhance bioethical relevance while promoting health literacy, expanding health awareness, increasing the range of health care options, and decreasing health disparities.
Ninth Month Consults seeks to resource screen projects with real life popular bioethical concerns identified through our bioethics consultations. Our consultations inform screen representation of:
- Clinical patient case based issues and human research,
- Broad non-case based issues impacting institutions, organizational policy, strategic planning, emerging technologies, law, ecological and humanitarian violations.
- Bioethics Screen Reflections (BSR) is an going project of Ninth Month Consults. It has been developed to review and promote good examples of bioethical threads in screen works. These reviews are available free of charge and without copyright restraints (other than noting the first publisher of the reviews). Bioethics Screen Reflections is disseminated to individuals, libraries, bioethics publications, and educational institutions. BSR strives to promote works that Ninth Month Consults believes relevant.
WHO USES NINTH MONTH CONSULTS?
-Screen directors, producers and writers who want to be well informed about bioethics relevant aspects of their creations. These works can be enhances by Ninth Month Consults long proximity with:
-Individuals, Families and Surrogates,
- Physicians, nurses, transplant services, organ donor organizations,
- Health system administrators, Hospital Bioethics committees,
- Conservators and attorneys,
- Policy makers, non-profit foundations, corporations and institutes,
- N.G.O.s and Relief Organizations,
- Scientific researchers, educators and Institutional Review Boards
WHAT DOES NINTH MONTH CONSULTS BELIEVE?
- Bioethics understanding we want depicted on screen should come from the reality of individuals and communities.
- We transfer the sense of what we learn from consults to screen and literary artist who want to be progressively bioethics relevant.
- We can help screen works speak truth to its power by promoting great screen works.
- Accurate bioethical depictions impact health and healthcare decision making.
- Though popular media influences peoples’ thoughts about healthcare it rarely expands bioethics content beyond medical drama.
- Screen works can help diminish health disparities including depictions of bioethical concerns.
HOW DOES NINTH MONTH CONSULTS WORK?
Ninth Month Consults uses a bioethics facilitation approach in both clinical and non-clinical consultations to mediate, share expertise and provide recommendations by:
-Helping clients of Ninth Month Consults with the most relevant information about the bioethics issues depicted in their work— related specifically to beneficence, autonomy and justice.
-Providing reasonable approaches to ranking bioethical concerns lurking in their works.
-Reviewing evidenced-based science and historical knowledge for clients so their works are relevant and reflect current information across race, class, and culture.
-Helps clients of Ninth Month Consults with the most relevant information about the bioethics issues depicted in their work— related specifically to beneficence, autonomy and justice.
WHERE DO NINTH MONTH CONSULTS HAPPEN?
In the home territory, actual or virtual, of the client-clinical medical or creative— needing the consultation; or where a presentation may be needed. Depending on the consultation the consultant may need to:
- Conduct confidential interviews as needed.
- Review confidential or proprietary information like clinical charts, test, consents, protocols, historical documents, films and scripts.
- Communicate with surrogates and relevant members of interdisciplinary care medical teams, scientist, and production team members.
- Access institutions: (committees, regulatory agencies, institutional review boards) and virtual institutions (literature, written policy, procedures.)
WHEN ARE NINTH MONTH CONSULTS AVAILABLE?
- As determined by the urgency of concerns and consultant availability.
- Where possible business hours ( USA Pacific Time) should be observed. Though, frequently, in clinical medical settings and research/collaboration individuals need to be met outside the normal workday or week.
- Consultation reports may be provided throughout the collaboration with a client either recorded on video in meetings/in writing.
-Retainers are generally required at the beginning of a consultation with re-evaluation at 50 days of input from Ninth Month Consults.
- A signed letter of agreement between the clients and Ninth Month Consults is necessary at the beginning of the relationship with clients.
WHO ARE NINTH MONTH CONSULTS’ BOARD OF DIRECTORS?
-Therese Francis PhD, (Ninth Month Consults Executive Director) is an author, publisher and principle of the Cross Quarter Publishing Group. The Cross Quarter Publishing Group is devoted to Multi-media products that promote wellness in its widest definition in the areas of health, thought, finances, spirituality, sovereignty and human potential. http://crossquarter.com/about-us/
-Dianne Houston is a film and television Director,Producer, and Screenwriter. She was the first African American Woman nominated for the Academy Award in the live action short film category. She holds nominations for the Writers Guild Award, won the 2017 Gracie Award and is recipient of an NAACP Image award. At this writing Dianne has written/directed/produced more than twelve television series -- five of them medical television dramas while others have medical through lines. http://diannehouston.com
-Deborah Clayton Wainhouse (affectionately known as Silver Wainhouse) is a writer and entrepreneur who brings her diverse background to Womanistics. Womanistics is a platform whose mission is to tell, value, and protect the stories of women—while recognizing their inherent strength to dismantle what hinders a woman's ability to thrive. Silver Wainhouse is based between the USA and her home in France.
-September Williams, MD, is the founding member of Ninth Month Consults and a physician-writer--bioethicist and filmmaker. Her attributes include fellowships in clinical medical ethics at the (University of Chicago’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics); Surgical Nutrition and hyperalimentation (Chicago Medical School/Roslyn Franklin University); and a HERSA Clinical Geriatrics Fellowship ( University of California San Francisco.) Dr. Williams has cared for patients for 30 years much of it focused on acute hospital, geriatrics, palliative and aER based medicine, and other areas near the edges of life and bioethics. She has provided more than 1000 case/non-case based healthcare ethics consultations. http://www.septemberwilliams.com