Call for Nominations for the FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Warm Greetings from the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM), Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES) and the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME)!
It gives us immense pleasure to announce the Call for Nominations for the FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23, the third round since we launched the awards in 2018. The awards are supported by the Elsevier Foundation. The Awards event is part of our biennial National Bioethics Conference (NBC), a platform established by the FMES and IJME in 2005. FMES hosts NBCs every two years, with the aim to foster dialogue and debate on critical ethical issues in global health, whilst maintaining an intersectional and inter-disciplinary lens to these discussions.
The 5th Global Mental Health Summit and the 9th National Bioethics Conference, December, 2022
This time, the 9th NBC has been jointly organised with the 5th Global Mental Health Summit (GMHS) and has been co-hosted by Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES), Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM), Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy (CMHLP), and Sangath. The main theme of the 9th NBC-5th GMHS has been ‘Mental Health: Center-staging Human Rights, Ethics, Law, and Policy’. GMHS is conducted once every three years by the hosting secretariat for the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH).
FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23
The FMES-IJME Ethics Awards will be co-hosted by the FMES in collaboration with BALM, Chennai this year. The awards will be presented for 'Outstanding Contribution to Ethical Practices and Improving Access to Mental Healthcare for Marginalised Communities', which are in line with the theme of the 9th NBC-5th GMHS Conference, that was concluded in December 2022. The Awards presentation ceremony will take place in the second quarter of the year 2023.
Relevance of the Awards
FMES and IJME have been working for over 30 years towards bringing ethical concerns in healthcare to prominence and inculcating ethics in healthcare practices, health research and policies. We have organised eight biennial NBCs and the ninth one has been recently concluded. This platform is linked with healthcare institutions and policy makers to create a space for public deliberation on ethical healthcare with the participation of people and civil-society organisations. Numerous individuals and organisations, with their dedication and collective efforts over the years, have made ethics a part of the public discourse on healthcare practices, research, and policy in India.
At present, there are insufficient avenues to recognise contributions made by individuals and civil society-based groups to healthcare ethics and bioethics in India and to honour them for these contributions that are making difference to people’s lives in diverse ways. The FMES-IJME, therefore, decided to institute a regular bioethics award that could encourage role models in the practice of ethics in healthcare.
Third round of FMES-IJME Ethics Awards (2022-23)
In this third round of FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23, we are pleased to announce the call for nomination (including self-nomination) only for Indian nationals and India-based organisations) for three awards to be conferred in the following categories:
a) Category 1 | Persons with lived experiences of navigating through mental health issues turned into advocates and champions in spaces of ‘right to mental healthcare’.
b) Category 2 | Youth-led organisation working with marginal communities on mental health matters, especially providing services, implementing innovative approaches to respond to mental health concerns of marginalised communities. Organisations that have been operating in mental healthcare for less than 5 years and the age bracket of the lead/head of the institution and/or of board members and/or overall team ranges between 15 and 25 years will be eligible for this category. Given the complexity of these criteria, the Award Selection Committee (ASC) may use its discretion within certain parameters.
c) Category 3 | Community-based civil society organisations engaged with mental health spaces, service provision, working to improve people’s access to mental health services, working to strengthen public mental healthcare services, and may have explored and/or implemented innovative approaches to community mental health service provision. The work of these organisations is expected to be informed by the overall philosophy of making mental health services inclusive; working towards destigmatising persons with mental health concerns, and their near and dear ones; and destigmatising seeking help or treatment for mental healthcare concerns.
Award prize:
- A cash award of INR 80,000/- (eighty thousand only) in each of the three categories.
- A citation prepared by the selection committee and read out at the award conferring event as part of the 9th NBC and for commemorating the completion of 30 years of FMES and IJME in the year 2023.
Award Selection Committee
The selection committee will have three members, who may each have a different background: (a) clinical practice expert; (b) public health practice/activism expert; and (c) non-medical person or person active in a civil-society organisation for bioethics, healthcare rights, and patient and consumer interests.
The selection work will be non-remunerative, but the committee members will be provided with compensation for travel and accommodation, if circumstances allow the committee members to meet in person.
Important dates:
- Call opens on: Friday, December 23, 2022
- Call ends on: Monday, January 30, 2023, 11:59 pm IST | Extended until Thursday, April 6, 2023
- Short-listing of nominees by the FMES-IJME Ethics Awards Selection Committee: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
- Final decision: Will Monday, April 18, 2023
- Awards presentation e-ceremony: Will be announced later
Nomination must be done by means of the prescribed form [Nomination form for individuals from Category 1 (PDF) (Word); Nomination form for organisations from Category 2 & 3 (PDF) (Word)] accompanied by supporting documents and any other relevant material, and to be submitted by email at [email protected].
If case of any queries regarding rules or any elements of the Awards, you can write to Mahendra Shinde and Sharanya S, Awards Secretariat Coordinators, at the above-mentioned email id.
For more information, please visit the following pages:
Call for nominations: FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23
Twitter handle: @ijmeethicsaward
We request you all to extensively share the Call for Nominations in your respective networks so that we are able to honour deserving individuals.
Thank you!
Warmest Regards,
FMES and IJME team
