Janie Abernethy, MD, MBE, is a general internist, clinical educator, and clinical ethicist at Johns Hopkins University, where she serves as an Associate Program Director for the Johns Hopkins Bayview Internal Medicine Residency and leads the Primary Care Track. She also co-chairs the Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital Ethics Committee. She has worked on clinical ethics and primary care–focused medical education, from providing longitudinal primary care to underserved and immigrant patients, to developing curricula on surrogate decision-making, outpatient documentation, and the responsible integration of emerging technologies such as AI scribes. Her work is situated at the intersection of patient-centered primary care, ethics in clinical practice, and the evolving technological landscape of medicine.
Dr. Abernethy obtained her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in Hispanic Studies and Cognitive Science. She obtained her Masters in Bioethics and MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Primary Care at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Abernethy continues to teach ethics across Hopkins graduate medical education programs, to care for a diverse primary care population, and to pursue scholarship aimed at strengthening ethical practice, clinical reasoning, and equitable care delivery.