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.
Karen H. Rothenberg, JD, MPA
Professor Rothenberg is a leading national expert on legal issues in health care. Over the last two decades she has focused her research primarily on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic testing and research, including the legislative approaches to genetic information in the health insurance and employment context, the impact of genetic research on racial and ethnic populations and women’s health care, and the use of genetic information in the courtroom. Professor Rothenberg is co-editor of the book Women and Prenatal Testing: Facing the Challenges of Genetic Technology and co-author of five articles on genetics and public policy that have been published in the journal Science, the most recent of which is “Judging Genes: When Should Judges Admit or Compel Genetic Tests?” Her other numerous publications cover diverse research interests including the role of gender in health care, AIDS, research ethics, the right to forego treatment, emergency care, and new reproductive technologies. She has testified before federal and state legislatures on a wide range of issues, including the U.S. House of Representatives’ Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Professor Rothenberg has served on the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission since its inception in 2006 (Chair from 2008-2010) and Co-Chaired the 2009 World Stem Cell Summit. She is a past president of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and former co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. During sabbaticals and IPA leaves from the law school, she has worked at the NIH in the Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Institute for Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) and NHGRI. She has served on the NICHD Institutional Review Board and has been a member of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the National Action Plan for Breast Cancer, and numerous NIH panels on prenatal care, the recruitment and retention of women in clinical studies, and the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics.
She received both a B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton University and an M.P.A. from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She earned a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law where she was a member of the Order of the Coif.
Leslie Meltzer Henry, JD, PhD
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.
Brendan Saloner, PhD
Leonard Rubenstein, JD, LLM
He has engaged in extensive research and writing on human rights, health and national security and armed conflict. His current work focuses on health services in volatile environments. He founded and chairs the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a group of humanitarian, human rights, health provider organizations working at the global and national levels, that seeks to reduce attacks on and interference with health workers, patients, facilities and transports. He is a member of the Lancet Commission on Migration and Health and the editorial board of Military and Humanitarian Ethics of the International Committee of Military Medicine.His writings have appeared in professional journals and in op-eds in major media such as the New York Times and Washington Post
Mr. Rubenstein is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council. He has served on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association and the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served as Chair of the Health and Peacebuilding Working Group at the United States Institute of Peace. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Congressional Minority Caucuses’ Healthcare Hero Award, the Sidel-Levy Award for Peace of the American Public Health Association, and the Syrian American Medical Association recognition award.
Gail Javitt, JD, MPH
Maria Merritt, PhD
HONORS AND AWARDS
- Hastings Center Fellow, elected December 2020
- Recognition for teaching excellence as principal instructor of JHSPH course, Ethics of Public Health Practice in Developing Countries (221.616.01: classroom), 4th term 2016-17, 2015-16, 2014-15, 2012-13, and 2011-12; (221.616.81: online), 4th term 2017-18 and 2016-17; and as principal instructor of Ethics in Global Health Practice (604.603.86), 2018-19.
- Student Assembly Special Recognition Award for Outstanding Commitment to Student Success, 2017
- Principal Investigator, NIH award number 1R01AI114458-01A1, 2015-19, “Assessing Social Justice in Economic Evaluation to Scale up Novel MDR-TB Regimens” (award issued by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
- Recognition for teaching excellence as principal instructor of JHSPH course, Ethics of Public Health Practice in Developing Countries (221.616.01), 4th term 2015-16; 2014-15; 2012-13; and 2011-12
- Co-Investigator, NIH award number 1R01AI085147-01A1, 2010-14, “Ancillary Care in Community-Based Research: Deciding What to Do” (PI Holly A. Taylor; award issued by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
- Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics career development award, 2009-12, “Researchers’ Obligations in Community-Based Research: Resolving Dilemmas of Care”
- Faculty Innovation Fund, 2007-08, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Ancillary Care in Public Health Intervention Research in Resource-Limited Settings: Researchers’ Practices and Decision-Making”(Co-PI Holly A. Taylor)
- Faculty Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, 2005-06
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, 2000-02
- Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, 1987-90
Michael Erdek, MD, MA
Alan Regenberg, MBE
Alan is also engaged in a broad range of research projects and programs, including the Berman Institute’s science programs: the Stem Cell Policy and Ethics (SCOPE) Program; the Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS-Neuroethics); and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells, ethics and law; and the eSchool+ Initiative. Recent research has focused on using deliberative democracy tools to engage with communities about their values for allocating scarce medical resources like ventilators in disasters like pandemics. Additional recent work has focused on ethical challenges related to gene editing, stem cell research, social media, public engagement, vaccines, and neuroethics. (Publications)
Zackary Berger, MD, PhD
Dr. Berger is Associate Professor in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine and Core Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, with joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. With an active practice in primary care internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Berger focuses his clinical, educational, and research work, as well as his widely read publications for the lay public, on the ways in which shared decision making in the doctor-patient encounter might be in conflict with medical evidence and the political, social, and psychological realities of the patient.
Dr. Berger teaches residents in their internal medicine clinic and medical students on the wards at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and is part of a Berman faculty team which teaches bioethics to residents in a number of Johns Hopkins specialty programs. He is also staff physician at the Esperanza Clinic Health Center, a free clinic serving undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Dr. Berger is the author of two books for the lay public on doctor-patient communication and on patient preference in the context of medical evidence.
Joseph Ali, JD
Rieder continues Seminar Series with talk on America’s Opioid Crisis
Bioethics, Pain Medicine and America’s Opioid Crisis
More than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdose in 2017, which is more than were killed at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This epidemic continues to be driven by opioids, which were involved in more than 49,000 of those deaths. Despite the scale of this problem, the opioid crisis has received fairly little sustained attention in the bioethics literature. In his Berman Institute Seminar Series talk, Travis Rieder argued that we must fill in this gap, and begin to show just how much specifically bioethics work needs to be done in this area.
Travis Rieder, PhD, is the Assistant Director for Education Initiatives, Director of the Master of Bioethics degree programand Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Public Health Advocacy within the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.