Person Type: Faculty

Mario Macis, PhD

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH) “Creative and Novel Ideas in HIV Research (CNIHR) grant for “Behavioral nudges, information and incentives for HIV testing: A field experiment in Ecuador”, 2016-18.
  • Johns Hopkins University Discovery Award, 2016.
  • Johns Hopkins University early-career Catalyst Award, 2015.
  • Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, 2013.
  • National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant for “Field Experiments on Incentives and Blood Donations”, 2009-12.

Gail Geller, ScD, MHS

In addition to her work in genetics, Dr. Geller’s other substantive areas of scholarship include the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the role of palliative care in chronic diseases, and the medical socialization process.  She received one of the highly coveted NIH “challenge” grants to explore the integration of palliative care in the management of children, young adults and families affected by chronic, life-threatening disorders (muscular dystrophy and sickle cell disease). She received a prestigious Kornfeld Fellowship to explore the intersection of bioethics and CAM. She has served as co-director of the educational component of the Johns Hopkins CAM Center, ethics representative on the Data Safety & Monitoring Board of the National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), and adjunct faculty at the Tai Sophia Institute in their Master’s Program in Transformative Leadership and Social Change.  For 15 years, she co-directed the required Integrative Medicine course for Hopkins medical students, and the Healer’s Art elective. Several of the grants onwhich she has served as PI, Co-PI or Co-I have focused oncultivating respect, trust, empathy, wonder, and tolerance forambiguity among current and future health professionals. The unifying themes that animate her work are communication and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, and the intrapersonal, interpersonal and social/cultural forces that influence moral development, attitudes and behavior. 

Dr. Geller also has longstanding interests in ethics education. She served as Co-Deputy Director of the Greenwall Fellowship Program in Bioethics & Health Policy until 2012, and now, as the Berman Institute’s Director of Education Initiatives, she oversees the Hecht-Levi Fellowship Program in Bioethicsand the Masters in Bioethics . Dr. Geller has occupied several educational leadership positions in the SOM.  She was involved in the revision to the undergraduate medical curriculum that took place in 2009. Currently, she co-directs the “culture of medicine” core theme which includes horizontal strands of particular relevance to ethics, professionalism and social justice. In addition, she directs the Scholarly Concentrationcalled the HEART (Humanism, Ethics, and the ‘Art’ ofMedicine), teaches in the “Medical Humanities & Social Medicine” elective, serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, and directs the Program in Arts, Humanities & Health.  She is a  member of the School of Medicine’s Admissions Committee.   

Dr. Geller has served on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities, the scientific review panel for the ELSI Program (Ethical, Legal and Social Issues) at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, the Advisory Board of the Center for Genetics Research Ethics and Law (CGREAL) at Case Western Reserve University, and the IOM Committee on the Review of Omics-Based Tests for Predicting Patient Outcomes in Clinical Trials. She was a Consultant to the Ethics Working Group of the National Children’s Study, the Informed Consent Working Group of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing (SACGT), the CDC’s Program in Public Health Genetics, and the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center. 

Nicole Civita, J.D.

Nicole holds an LL.M. in Agricultural and Food Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law, a J.D., magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the Georgetown University Law Center, and an A.B. in American Studies and Creative Writing from Columbia University.

Alan Goldberg, PhD

Dr. Goldberg actively serves/d on the International Animal Welfare Advisory Boards of Shell, and Procter & Gamble, consults with CeeTox (an in vitro toxicology CRO) and Epithelix. In the non-profit area, he is a trustee of the Humane Society University, a member of the Advisory Board of Faculty for the Department of Institutional Review Ethics and Administration in Nicholas Cardinal Cheong Graduate School for Life, The Catholic University of Korea, (South Korea), a member of the Alexandra Foundation (Monaco), a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Scientific Communication (ISC); and is on the Toxicology Panel of EFSA (European Food Safety Authority in Parma, Italy).

Starting in 2007, Dr. Goldberg served as a Pew Commissioner on the study of the Impact of Industrial (US) Farm Animal Production, on issues of public health, environment, animal welfare and social justice. While on the commission, Dr. Goldberg studied with the Talmudic Scholar Rabbi Avram Reisner to learn the Jewish laws dealing with food animal production. At the request of the Committee on Jewish Law of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Dr. Goldberg shared his understandings of farm animal welfare. Dr. Goldberg also chairs the management board of Orange House Partnership, a Belgium NGO dedicated to provide training on food safety to the developing world.

Currently, Dr Goldberg is working on define an ethical framework for feeding the world at an anticipated population of 9+ billion people.

Michelle Huckaby Lewis, MD, JD

Dr. Lewis received a BA degree in English and History from Stanford University before earning her JD degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law. After law school, she worked on Capitol Hill as a Legislative Assistant for Congressman Bob Clement from Tennessee. While working on Capitol Hill, she was appointed to the White Task Force on Health Care Reform during the Clinton Administration. She served on work groups related to Health Insurance Reform and Medical Malpractice Reform. Dr. Lewis then attended Tulane University School of Medicine and received her MD degree. She completed a residency in Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Johns Hopkins University and the Greenwall Fellowship Program in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University.

Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD

Greene’s most recent book, Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine, narrates the history of generic drugs as a means of exploring problems of similarity and difference in modern medicine.   Generic drugs are never fully identical to the brand name products they imitate.  Rather, their claims to being ‘the same’ lies in proof that they are similar enough in ways that matter to be functionally interchangeable. As the market for generic substitutes has grown–from only 10% of the American pharmaceutical market in 1960 to nearly 80% by 2010–so too have epistemological and epidemiological conflicts over how one can prove that generics are truly equivalent to their brand-name counterparts.   These debates over generic drugs reveal fundamental conflicts over what it means to practice rational medicine, and what role consumers, physicians, insurers, and others should have in defining that rationality.

He has begun work on a new project, Medicine At a Distance, which examines how changing expectations of instantaneous communications through electric, electronic, and digital media transformed the nature of medical knowledge.  Most histories of medical technology focus on heroic diagnostic and therapeutic innovations–like X-rays and artificial hearts–which stand as visible symbols of medical modernity.   His research is focused on recapturing how more  mundane technologies of communication enabled and altered the production, circulation, and consumption of medical knowledge, from telegraph to text pager, telephone to telemedicine, fax machine to Facebook.  This work is supported by a  Faculty Scholars Fellowship from the Greenwall Foundation.

Carlton Haywood, Jr., PhD

Dr. Haywood’s professional activities included involvement in sickle cell initiatives at the state and federal level. Dr. Haywood serves on Maryland’s Statewide Steering Committee on Services for Adults with Sickle Cell Disease. At the federal level, Dr. Haywood served on a National Human Genome Research Institute sponsored working group charged with examining the evidence regarding the clinical implications of sickle cell carrier status. Dr. Haywood also served as a member of the oversight steering committee for the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Demonstration Program.

Dr. Haywood received his doctorate in bioethics and health policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Haywood received his undergraduate degree in religious studies (1999), and his master’s degree in bioethics (2003), from the University of Virginia.