Kelly Dineen is an Instructor of Health Law and Ethics at SLU LAW, where she previously served as  the Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs and as the Assistant Director of the Center for Health Law Studies. Prof. Dineen teaches Bioethics and the Law.

Prior to joining SLU LAW, Dean Dineen practiced in the health care practice group at Husch & Eppenberger LLC (now Husch Blackwell Sanders, LLP), in which she also helped develop the firm’s Children with Disabilities Pro Bono Project. She earned her J.D. and certificate in health care law from SLU LAW and holds the honor of being an 1843 Scholar, as well as the recipient of five Academic Excellence Awards.

Dean Dineen practiced nursing for a decade prior to entering SLU LAW. She began in a neurosurgical and organ transplant intensive care unit and later worked as a neurosurgical clinical and research nurse at an academic medical center. She has extensive clinical experience in caring for patients with implanted programmable neuromodulation devices and assisted in the development of one of the first centers in the Midwest to provide functional neurosurgery for patients with movement disorders and chronic intractable pain.

She is pursuing her PhD in Health Care Ethics. Dean Dineen’s research interests include the intersection of ethics, law and policy in the treatment of people with cognitive and psychiatric disabilities; current practices in the treatment of individuals with programmable implanted neuromodulation devices; moral development and practice patterns in the treatment of pain; neuroethics; and organ donation policies.