The theme of the 11^th NBC invites the bioethics community to examine how trust between patients, practitioners, institutions and the public can be sustained and strengthened at a time of rapid change in Global and Indian healthcare.

The National Bioethics Conference (NBC), convened biennially by the Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES) since 2005, is India’s foremost platform for dialogue on ethics in healthcare, research, public health, and allied areas including humanities. The 11th NBC is being co-organised by Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES), the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME), hosted by Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University) Medical College (BVDUMC), Pune — a National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) A++ accredited institution whose teaching hospital carries National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) accreditation for its ethics committee and clinical services.

Since the first gathering in Mumbai in 2005, the NBC has been held in cities across the country — Bengaluru (2007), New Delhi (2010), Hyderabad (2012), Bengaluru again (2014) and Pune (2017). The 7th NBC, in Bengaluru in December 2018, was convened jointly with the 14th World Congress of Bioethics (Joint 7^th NBC and 14^th WCB) of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB) — the first time this global congress was hosted in South Asia — co-hosted by FMES and IJME with partner institutions. The 8^th, 9^th and 10^th  editions were held online, and the 11th NBC now returns the conference to an in-person setting in Pune.

Now in its 34th year, IJME has been published by FMES since 1993 and is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus and The Philosopher’s Index. Sustained through an open-access, pay-what-you-want model, it stands as South Asia’s pre-eminent peer-reviewed journal of bioethics, healthcare ethics and the health humanities. Alongside it, the HEaL (Health, Ethics and Law) Institute, established by FMES in 2018, advances capacity strengthening in bioethics, especially research ethics both in biomedical research and public health ethics, building, research and advocacy in the field. Together, these platforms give NBC its depth and continuity.