Healthcare and healthcare ethics are evolving at an unprecedented pace. Rapid technological advancement, shifting healthcare systems, workforce challenges, changing legal and policy landscapes, increasing attention to equity and cultural humility, and growing organizational complexity continue to reshape the environments in which healthcare professionals, ethicists, and interdisciplinary teams practice. At the same time, clinical ethics itself is undergoing transformation as programs expand, professionalize, adapt, and redefine their roles within healthcare institutions and communities.

As a field, we are simultaneously responding to changes already unfolding while attempting to anticipate those still on the horizon. Clinical ethics programs, healthcare organizations, and interdisciplinary care teams are building new models, testing innovative approaches, navigating emerging tensions, and confronting persistent challenges without clear roadmaps for what comes next. These realities extend across both adult and pediatric healthcare settings, where evolving technologies, family dynamics, systems pressures, and changing expectations continue to raise new ethical questions and complexities.

This year’s theme, Mapping Change, focuses on how healthcare professionals, clinical ethicists, and interdisciplinary teams are navigating periods of rapid transition and uncertainty. What innovations have emerged in response to recent shifts within healthcare? What longstanding challenges remain unresolved? What ethical tensions are beginning to surface as healthcare systems, technologies, patient expectations, and institutional priorities continue to evolve? And importantly, how do we prepare for changes we can already see approaching?

Through interactive discussions, collaborative sessions, workshops, and presentations, attendees will examine the evolving landscape of healthcare ethics across adult and pediatric settings while exploring both the opportunities and unresolved questions shaping the future of the field.