McKinney Alum Convinces Legislators to Change Consent Law
05/30/2017
Earlier this year, Amber Comer, ’11, testified before the Indiana House Committee on Public Health regarding a bill that would expand Indiana’s health care consent law to include adult grandchildren and grandparents.
Her testimony helped change Indiana law.
Comer is an assistant professor of health sciences in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at IUPUI. Comer also teaches Disability Law at IU McKinney, and she has been researching the ethical dilemmas created as a result of Indiana’s health care consent laws since she was a Ph.D. student completing a medical ethics fellowship.
The health care consent law is triggered when a patient is unable to make medical decisions and a surrogate must be designated to make decisions on the patient’s behalf. With 30 of her students in attendance at the hearing, Comer told the legislative panel that in Indiana the only people under state law who qualify to serve as a surrogate are the patient’s spouse, parents, adult siblings and adult children.
Indiana lawmakers did vote to expand Indiana’s health care consent law to include grandparents and grandchildren, and Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the new legislation on April 13.
In addition to her success before the legislature, Comer is the recipient of two IUPUI awards: one for Teaching Excellence and another for Service Excellence.
Read more details at https://news.iu.edu/stories/2017/04/iupui/21-intelligence-health-care-consent-law.html