Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH

Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH, is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. She was the Berman Institute’s Director from 1995 until 2016, and the inaugural Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director (2014-­2016). Dr. Faden was the inaugural Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics rom 1995-2026. In the twenty-plus years in which Dr. Faden led the Berman Institute, she transformed what was an informal interest group of faculty across Johns Hopkins into a one of the world’s premier bioethics programs with over 35 faculty, 30 staff and over 100 alumni. Under her direction, the Berman Institute became a university­wide unit of Johns Hopkins with its own building, reporting to the Provost. Dr. Faden also secured a significant endowment for the Berman Institute, including six endowed professorships and an endowed directorship.

Dr. Faden is a leading scholar in the field of bioethics. She is the author and editor of numerous books and many articles on biomedical ethics and public policy, including most significantly Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (with Madison Powers), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (with Tom L. Beauchamp), Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights (with Madison Powers; Oxford University Press).

Dr. Faden co-led the PREVENT  (Pregnancy Research Ethics for Vaccines, Epidemics, and New Technologies 2016-2018) and COMIT (COVID-19 Maternal Immunization Tracker (2019-2021) projects. She is a co-investigator on”Enabling Ethical Analysis and Public Justification in State-Level Pandemic Responses in the United States,” project; Commissioner on the Lancet Commission, Strengthening the Usefulness of Epidemiological Modeling, 2023-Present; a member of the James Beard Foundation Ethics Committee, October 2021 – Present; and a member of the COVID-19 Ethics & Governance Working Group, World Health Organization, February 2021 – Present.

Dr. Faden is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Psychological Association. She has served on numerous national advisory committees and commissions, including President William Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which she chaired.

In 2011, Dr. Faden was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIMR). In 2019 she was the recipient of the Bioethics Founders Award from the Hastings Center, for Lifetime Achievement and in 2025 she was awarded the Greenwall Foundation’s Bernard Lo, MD Mentoring Award in Bioethics.