Jeffrey Kahn

Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH, is the Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Kahn also holds the Robert Henry Levi and Ryda Hecht Levi Professorship in Bioethics and Public Policy and serves as a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His work addresses a range of bioethics issues, including the intersection of ethics with health and science policy, human and animal research ethics, public health, and ethical considerations in emerging biomedical technologies.

Before joining Johns Hopkins, Kahn was director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. He has participated in numerous state and federal advisory panels, including serving as chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Board on Health Sciences Policy and its committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Kahn contributed to the National Academies committee that developed principles for the acceptable uses of gene editing in humans, focusing on the ethical boundaries of germline modifications.

Kahn is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of The Hastings Center. He served as the founding president of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors.

At the Berman Institute, Kahn has overseen initiatives that expanded collaboration across Johns Hopkins University, increased resources for faculty, staff, and students, and guided the institute through significant public health challenges. Under his leadership, the institute established a global partnership on infectious disease ethics with the University of Oxford, launched the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg Bioethics iDeas Lab, and developed bioethics training programs for health and science professionals in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Kahn and colleagues completed the NIH-funded BRIDGES project, which examined the ethical, legal, and social implications of host genomics in infectious disease.

Kahn's publications include "Contemporary Issues in Bioethics," "Beyond Consent: Seeking Justice in Research," "Ethics of Research With Human Subjects: Selected Policies and Resources," "The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics" (editor), and "Digital Contact Tracing for Pandemic Response" (editor), as well as more than 125 scholarly and research articles. He served as executive producer of the bioethics podcast "playing god?" and wrote the bi-weekly column Ethics Matters on CNN.com. Kahn speaks internationally on bioethics topics and frequently engages with media to address ethical questions at the intersection of science, medicine, and society.