BBI Staff
Stephan Haimowitz, J.D.,
Research Associate
Stephan Haimowitz, J.D. has studied and advocated the rights of people with disabilities in diverse roles, including class-action litigator, policy analyst, hospital administrator, state agency counsel, bioethics consultant and trainer of direct-care staff. He directed a federally-funded study of legal initiatives to reduce the use of restraint and seclusion in psychiatric facilities, and served on the team selected by the US Department of Health and Human Services to conduct the first evaluation of the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness program.
Stephan has provided technical assistance on the cost-effective settlement of complex litigation, as well as guidance on insuring human research participant protections, improving emergency preparedness for people with disabilities, adapting evidence-based practices to local circumstances and establishing collaboration between mental health and criminal justice agencies. He has advised a range of entities, (e.g., Arizona Health Department, National Committee for Quality Assurance, Cook County/Chicago Circuit Court, Territory of Guam), and has lectured at the Cornell University School of Medicine, State University of New York Graduate School of Criminal Justice and Harvard’Executive Training Program for State Mental Health Administrators.
Stephan led a coalition of deaf advocacy groups and an organization of parents of deaf children in getting the NY State Board of Regents to recognize American Sign Language and establish interpreter standards. In addition, he has served as a Grant Proposal Reviewer for the US Department of Justice, an Administrative Law Judge for the NY State’s Vocational Rehabilitation Agency and as a Peer Reviewer for Psychiatric Services, the most-read journal in its field.
Selected Publications
- Whose Hands Are Tied?: A comparison of disabilities studies and bioethics approaches to coercion in mental health care
- Proposal for Commissioned Paper for the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor (accepted July 2009).
Full-text [.doc]
- Restraint and Seclusion: A Risk Management Analysis, A National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors’ White Paper.
Full-text [.pdf]
- Ending Harm From Restraint and Seclusion: The Evolving Efforts.
S. Haimowitz & J. Urff
US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (in press).
- Individual Rights and Discrimination: The Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
S. Haimowitz & S. Shea
Peter Danziger, Ed. REPRESENTING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, 3rd Edition, 2007 Revision, (NY State Bar Association).
- Slowing the Revolving Door: Community Reentry of Offenders with Mental Illness.
55 Psychiatric Services 4, 375 (April, 2004).
- Can Mental Health Courts End the Criminalization of Persons With Mental Illness?
53 Psychiatric Services 10, 1226 (October, 2002).
- Disability Matters: Differences and Rights.
1 American Journal of Bioethics 3, 53 (Summer, 2001).
- Response to Professor Tucker’s “Deaf Culture, Cochlear Implants and Elective Disability.
The Hastings Center Report, March-April 1999, 5.
- Uninformed Decision-Making: The Case of Surrogate Research Consent.
The Hastings Center Report, November-December 1997, 9.
- Strategies for Improving Deaf Education - The Case of Interpreter Qualifications.
The Endeavor, American Society for Deaf Children, Summer 1997, 15.
- An Overview of AIDS Legal Issues.
Francine Cournos and Nicholas Bakalar, Eds., AIDS AND PEOPLE WITH SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS (Yale University Press, 1997).
- A Patient Returns From Death With Dignity: Error, Uncertainty and the Right to Die.
S. Haimowitz & R. Goldman
New York State Bar Journal, October, 1990, 732.
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