- Associate Director for Global Programs
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics - Assistant Professor, Department of International Health
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Mr. Ali’s scholarly work engages a range of ethics and regulatory challenges in domestic and international bioethics. Some of his recent and ongoing research activities have included projects that employ conceptual, qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the impact of international bioethics capacity development programs; to create and empirically test enhanced approaches for informed consent; to support ethics and regulatory oversight and guideline development for health services/systems research; and to study the emerging ethical, legal and societal implications of observational and interventional global mobile and digital health. He previously served as Co-Lead of the Ethics & Regulatory Task-Force for the national Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Network (PCORnet) and currently serves as Co-Chair of the Ethics and Regulatory Work Group for the NIH/VA/DOD Pain Management Collaboratory Coordinating Center. He manages the NIH-funded Johns Hopkins-Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program, which, for the past 18 years, has provided training and supported collaborative institutional partnerships to advance research ethics capacity across 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. He is also Associate Director of a Fogarty-NIH program to establish a research ethics Master’s program at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in research ethics and bioethics & law at Johns Hopkins and serves on the editorial board of the journal Accountability in Research.
Research Interests
- Ethics and global digital health
- International bioethics capacity development program evaluation
- Optimizing informed consent
- Ethics of international health policy and systems research
- Ethics/regulatory challenges of pragmatic clinical trial networks
Education
- Honours BA, University of Toronto (Bioethics & Philosophy)
- JD, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
- Health Law Certificate, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Recent Publications
- Ali J, Labrique AB, Gionfriddo K, Pariyo G, Gibson DG, Pratt B, Deutsch-Feldman M, Hyder AA “Ethics Considerations in Global Mobile Phone-Based Surveys of Non-Communicable Diseases: A Conceptual Exploration” J Med Internet Res 2017;19(5):e110. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.7326 PMID: 28476723.
- Kass N, Ali J, Hallez K, Hyder A. “Bioethics training programmes for Africa: evaluating professional and bioethics-related achievements of African trainees after a decade of Fogarty NIH investment” BMJ Open 2016;6:e012758 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012758 PMCID: PMC5030587
- Ali J, Califf R, Sugarman J. Anticipated Ethics and Regulatory Challenges in PCORnet: The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network Accountability in Research 2015 Jul 20. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 26192996. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26192996
- Ali J, Andrews J, Somkin C, Rabinovich CE. Harms, Benefits, and the Nature of Interventions in Pragmatic Clinical Trials Clinical Trials, first published online on September 15, 2015 doi:10.1177/1740774515597686. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26374680
- Ali J, Kass N, Sewankambo N, White T, Hyder A. Evaluating International Research Ethics Capacity Development: An Empirical Approach Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 2014; 9(2), 41-51. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24782071
- Aggarwal R, Gupte N, Kass N, Taylor H, Ali J, Bhan A, Aggarwal A, Sisson SD,
Kanchanaraksa S, McKenzie-White J, McGready J, Miotti P, Bollinger RC. A
comparison of online versus on-site training in health research methodology: a
randomized study. BMC Med Educ. 2011 Jun 17;11:37. PubMed PMID: 21682858; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3141795. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21682858