Alex Kon, MD, HEC-C

Dr. Kon is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics (voluntary) and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Bioethics & Humanities.  He is the Chair of the Department of Women and Children’s Services at Community Medical Center and the Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Inpatient Pediatric Services at Community Children’s in Missoula, MT.  He received his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at UC Berkeley and his Doctorate in Medicine and Master’s in Surgery at McGill University.  He completed Pediatrics residency at Stanford University, and dual fellowship training in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Medical Ethics at UC San Francisco and Children’s Hospital Oakland.  He is board certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and Healthcare Ethics Consultation (HEC-C).
 
Dr. Kon has served as the President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, Chair of the Pediatric Research Ethics Workgroup and of the Clinical Research Ethics Key Function Committee for the National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award Consortium, and as Lead for Health Care Ethics for the United States Military Health Care System.  He has authored and co-authored over 100 publications including international guidelines on shared decision-making, futility, and family support in the ICU.
 
His scholarship focuses primarily on how parents and doctors can work together to make difficult, life-and-death decisions for critically ill and injured children.  In 2009, he introduced the decision-making model termed informed nondissent that has been officially endorsed by professional organizations as an ethically appropriate model of decision-making to support parents and families and has become a tool used internationally when making difficult decisions for patients.  He has also published on an array of other topics including decision-making for infants with intersex, teaching ethics and compassionate care to medical students and trainees, and implicit racial bias in healthcare.  He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal AJOB Empirical Bioethics.

Alex Kon, MD, HEC-C

Academic Title: 
Chair and Medical Director
Department Roles: 
Department of Women and Children’s Services
Community Medical Center and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Inpatient Pediatric Services at Community Children’s in Missoula
MT