Larry Palmer, professor of law at Cornell University, has been named as a member of the board of directors of the American Medical Association's National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF).

The NPSF hopes to improve health care safety by studying how medical mistakes occur and implementing safeguards to prevent errors from injuring patients. Board members represent the health care industry as well as consumer advocacy groups, medical ethicists, trial lawyers and scientific research institutions.

Palmer teaches medical ethics to undergraduate, law and medical students. He served as executive producer of "Susceptible to Kindness: 'Miss Ever's Boys' and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study," an educational video that examines issues raised by the controversial Tuskegee Study, which documented the effects of untreated syphilis on some 400 impoverished african-American males. In addition, he is the author of the book Law, Medicine and Social Justice and numerous articles relating to law, science medicine and public policy.