Thomas (Tom) Harter, PhD, is the Director of the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, WI. Dr. Harter received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Tennessee, specializing in medical ethics and business ethics. He then completed the two-year Cleveland Fellowship in Advanced Bioethics (CFAB), learning and honing the skills used in clinical ethics consultation and empirical bioethics research. 

Dr. Harter provides ethics education programs and workshops for a variety of health professions audiences at all different training levels within Gundersen, locally, nationally, and internationally. He chairs both the Gundersen Institutional Review Board and the Gundersen Ethics Committee. In these roles, Dr. Harter has helped develop institutional policies and practices, staff education, and patient and community education with special focuses on advance care planning, community engagement, and medico-industry relationships.

Dr. Harter’s research on ethical issues that arise at the intersection of business, medical professionalism, and patient care have resulted in numerous peer-reviewed conference presentations and articles. Currently, Dr. Harter is serving as the Immediate Past President of the Academy for Professionalism in Health Care (APHC) from 2022-2024, the Immediate Past President of the newly formed Bioethics Network of the Upper Midwest (BENUM), and recently served on the Wisconsin Department of Health Services COVID-19 vaccine allocation committee. He is co-editor of the forthcoming textbook published by Oxford University Press, Medical Professionalism: Theory, Education, and Practice.