Leslie Meltzer Henry, JD, PhD

Professor
  • Core Faculty
    Berman Institute of Bioethics
  • Professor of Law
    University of Maryland School of Law

Leslie Meltzer Henry, JD, PhD, MSc, is a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.  She is also a law professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. Her teaching and scholarship focuses on issues in constitutional law, bioethics, public health law and policy, reproductive justice, and research ethics. She is an associate editor of the Oxford Handbook for Public Health Ethics (OUP, 2016), and a contributor to the Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics (OUP, 2008).

Her scholarship has been published in peer-review medical journals and leading law reviews, including the New England Journal of Medicine; University of Pennsylvania Law Review; Michigan Law Review; Georgetown Law Journal; Journal of Law and the Biosciences; Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; American Journal of Bioethics; Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, and Journal of Health Care Law & Policy. Professor Henry has also guest-edited symposia for the Forum for Health Economics & Policy (“Strategies for Health Care Cost Containment,” 2012) and the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (“Human Subjects Research Regulations: Proposals for Reform,” 2013).

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Professor Henry provides expert commentary for federal and local agencies, organizations, and the media. She has served as a bioethics consultant to the Department of Defense and has presented before panels of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health Bioethics Advisory Committee. Professor Henry has provided written commentary for the Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Network, and she has been quoted in media outlets including the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, NPR, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Forbes, and the Baltimore Sun.

Professor Henry is a co-investigator on a project focused on addressing the ethical and legal challenges of conducting research with pregnant women during public health emergencies, like the Zika crisis, where there is an urgent need to attend to the health needs of pregnant women and their offspring.  She is also a member of PHASES, a research team aiming to develop ethically and legally acceptable strategies for conducting research about HIV treatment and prevention during pregnancy.

Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Henry completed a post-doctoral fellowship in bioethics and health policy at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Georgetown Law Center, clerked for the Honorable Judith Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was a fellow in the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Human Subjects Research, and was founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics.

Research Interests

  • Public health law and policy
  • Reproductive justice
  • Research ethics

Education

  • B.A., University of Virginia
  • M.Sc., Oxford University
  • J.D., Yale Law School
  • Ph.D., University of Virginia

Recent Publications

Legal Obstacles to Including Adolescents in HIV Prevention Research, Journal of Medical Ethics (forthcoming 2018) (with H. Cleckler).

Ethical Considerations Concerning Amnioinfusions for Treating Fetal Bilateral Renal Agenesis, 131 Obstetrics & Gynecology 130 (2018) (with others).

Legal Complexities of Global Vaccine Compensation Systems, 317 JAMA 1911 (2017) (with Anna C. Mastroianni).

Ethics, Regulation, and Beyond: The Landscape of Research with Pregnant Women, 14 (Supp. 3) BMC Reproductive Health 173 (2017) (with others).

Research with Pregnant Women: New Insights on Legal Decision-Making, 47(3) Hastings Center Report 38 (2017) (with others).

Advancing HIV Research with Pregnant Women: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities, 30 AIDS 2261 (2016) (with others).