Bio
Sean A. Valles is Professor and Director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice at Michigan State University, where he is joint-appointed in the Lyman Briggs College (MSU’s residential interdisciplinary science and science studies college) and the Department of Philosophy.
Dr. Valles is a philosopher of health specializing in the ethical and evidentiary complexities of how social contexts—everything from one’s local food options to the presence or absence of exposure to violent policing practices—combine to create patterns of inequitable health disparities. His work includes studying the challenges of responsibly using race and ethnicity concepts in monitoring health disparities, scrutinizing the rhetoric of the COVID-19 pandemic as an ‘unprecedented’ problem that could not be prepared for, and examining how biomedicine meshes with public health and population health.
Dr. Valles’s desire to be an “engaged” philosopher has led him to a variety of relationships and collaborations with practicing scientists. He is a core faculty member at the Michigan State U. Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Program. He has served on an interdisciplinary research team through the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, studying the theoretical and practical aspects (including health and welfare aspects) of “evolutionary mismatch.” He has collaborated with the University of Edinburgh Ethnicity and Health Research Group (in the Centre for Population Health Sciences), working as a visiting scholar with the group in April-May 2013. Through his appointment in Lyman Briggs, an interdisciplinary science and science studies college, he has also worked with science colleagues on a State Department grant to assist the University of Duhok (in the Kurdistan region of Iraq) with revising its science curriculum, including scientific reasoning courses.
Selected Publications
Valles, S. A. (2021). Why Race and Ethnicity Are Not Like Other Risk Factors: Applying Structural Competency and Epistemic Humility in the Covid-19 Pandemic. Philosophy of Medicine, 2(1), 1-8.
Valles, S. A. (2021). The Coupled Ethical-Epistemic Model as a Resource for Feminist Philosophy of Science, and a Case Study Applying the Model to the Demography of “Hispanic” Race and Ethnicity. In H. Grasswick & N. McHugh (Eds.), Making the Case: Feminist and Critical Race Theorists Investigate Case Studies.
Valles, S. A. (2020). Philosophy of Biomedicine. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
Valles, S. A. (2019). A pluralistic and socially responsible philosophy of epidemiology field should actively engage with social determinants of health and health disparities. Synthese.
Valles, S. A., Piso, Z., O’Rourke, M. (2019). Coupled Ethical-Epistemic Analysis as a Tool for Environmental Science. Ethics, Policy & Environment. 22 (3) 267-286.
Valles, S. A. (2018). Philosophy of Population Health: Philosophy for a New Public Health Era. Routledge.
Valles, S. A. (2015) Bioethics and the Framing of Climate Change’s Health Risks. Bioethics, 29(5), 334-341.
Katikireddi, S. V. and Valles, S. A. (2015) Coupled Ethical–Epistemic Analysis of Public Health Research and Practice: Categorizing Variables to Improve Population Health and Equity, American Journal of Public Health, 105 (1), e36-e42.
Valles, S.A. (2012) Heterogeneity of Risk within Racial Groups, a Challenge for Public Health Programs. Preventive Medicine, 55(5), 405-408
Valles, S.A. (2012) Should Direct to Consumer Personalized Genomic Medicine Remain Unregulated? A Rebuttal of the Defenses. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 55(2), 250-265.