Biography
Dr. Kass is the Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins, Deputy Director for Public Health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also serving as Interim Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Kass conducts empirical and conceptual work in bioethics and health policy. Her publications are primarily in the field of U.S. and global research ethics, public health ethics, infectious diseases and ethics policy, and ethics and the learning healthcare system. From 2017-2023, Dr. Kass served as Vice-Provost for Graduate Education for Johns Hopkins University. She served as Ethics Advisor, Office of the Commissioner, at the Food and Drug Administration through an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) arrangement 2023-2024. In 2009-2010, Dr. Kass was based in Geneva, Switzerland, working with the World Health Organization (WHO) Ethics Review Committee Secretariat. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and an elected fellow of the Hastings Center.
Dr. Kass is coeditor (with Ruth Faden) of HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Oxford University Press, 1996).
She has served as consultant to the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kass currently serves as the Chair of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB; she previously co-chaired the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Committee to develop Recommendations for Informed Consent Documents for Cancer Clinical Trials and served on the NCI’s central IRB. Current research projects examine improving informed consent in human research, ethical guidance development for Ebola and other infectious outbreaks, and ethics and learning health care. Dr. Kass teaches the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on U.S. and International Research Ethics and Integrity, she served as the director of the School’s PhD program in bioethics and health policy from its inception until 2016, and she has directed (with Adnan Hyder) the Johns Hopkins Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program since its inception in 2000. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center.
Source: Johns Hopkins University
Recent Publications
- Kass, N.E. and Faden, R.R. “Ethics and Learning Health Care: The Essential Roles of Engagement, Transparency, and Accountability”, Learning Health Systems, 2018; September 18. e10066. doi: 10.1002/lrh2.10066
- Kass, N. “A Journey in Public Health Ethics”, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2017; 60(1): 103-116. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2017.0022.
- Kass, N. (2014). Ebola, Ethics, and Public Health: What’s Next? Annals of internal medicine, 161(10), 744-745.
- Ali, J., Kass, N. E., Sewankambo, N. K., White, T. D., & Hyder, A. A. (2014). Evaluating International Research Ethics Capacity Development: An Empirical Approach. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 9(2), 41-51.
- Kass, N., Hecht, K., Paul, A., & Birnbach, K. (2014). Ethics and Obesity Prevention: Ethical Considerations in Three Approaches to Reducing Consumption of Sugar Sweetened Beverages. American journal of public health, 104(5), 787-795.
- Kass, N. E., Faden, R. R., GooDMAN, S. N., PRoNoVoST, P. E. T. E. R., TuNiS, S. E. A. N., & BEAuCHAMP, T. L. (2013). The Research-Treatment Distinction: A Problematic Approach for Determining Which Activities Should Have Ethical Oversight. Hastings Center Report, 43(s1), S4-S15.
- Faden, R. R., Kass, N. E., Goodman, S. N., Pronovost, P., Tunis, S., & Beauchamp, T. L. (2013). An Ethics Framework for a Learning Health Care System: A Departure from Traditional Research Ethics and Clinical Ethics. Hastings Center Report, 43(s1), S16-S27.
- Kass, N. E., & Faden, R. R. (2018). Ethics and Learning Health Care: The Essential roles of engagement, transparency, and accountability. Learning Health Systems, 2(4), e10066. https://doi.org/10.1002/lrh2.10066
