Nancy E. Kass

About

Nancy E. Kass, ScD, is the Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She serves as the Deputy Director for Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and is also a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on empirical work in bioethics and health policy, with publications primarily in U.S. and international research ethics, HIV/AIDS ethics policy, public health ethics—including ethics related to obesity prevention and public health preparedness—and ethics within the learning healthcare system. Dr. Kass has held roles such as Vice-Provost for Graduate Education at Johns Hopkins and has served as a consultant to various national and international bodies, including the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the National Academy of Sciences. She is also involved in developing ethical guidance for infectious disease outbreaks and improving informed consent in human research. Her academic background includes a BA from Stanford University, a ScD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and post-doctoral training at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) and a Fellow of the Hastings Center.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Virology
• Business
• Law
• Nursing
• Environmental health
• Public relations
• Pathology
• Risk analysis (engineering)

Selected publications

• The public’s role in COVID-19 vaccination: Human-centered recommendations to enhance pandemic vaccine awareness, access, and acceptance in the United States

  Vaccine · 2020 · 238 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Integration of Clinical Trials With the Practice of Medicine

  JAMA · 2024-06-03 · 64 citations

  articleOpen access

  Importance: Optimal health care delivery, both now and in the future, requires a continuous loop of knowledge generation, dissemination, and uptake on how best to provide care, not just determining what interventions work but also how best to ensure they are provided to those who need them. The randomized clinical trial (RCT) is the most rigorous instrument to determine what works in health care. However, major issues with both the clinical trials enterprise and the lack of integration of clinic…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Immunity certification for COVID-19: ethical considerations

  Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2020 · 55 citations

  Restrictive measures imposed because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have resulted in severe social, economic and health effects. Some countries have considered the use of immunity certification as a strategy to relax these measures for people who have recovered from the infection by issuing these individuals a document, commonly called an immunity passport. This document certifies them as having protective immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SAR…

  PublisherDOI

• Randomized comparison of two interventions to enhance understanding during the informed consent process for research

  Clinical Trials · 2021-04-23 · 34 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND/AIMS: Many investigators have tested interventions to improve research participant understanding of information shared during the informed consent process, using a variety of methods and with mixed results. A valid criticism of most consent research is that studies are often conducted in simulated research settings rather than ongoing clinical studies. The present study rigorously tested two simple and easily adoptable strategies for presenting key consent information to participants…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Modernizing the Data Infrastructure for Clinical Research to Meet Evolving Demands for Evidence

  JAMA · 2024-08-05 · 24 citations

  article

  Importance: The ways in which we access, acquire, and use data in clinical trials have evolved very little over time, resulting in a fragmented and inefficient system that limits the amount and quality of evidence that can be generated. Observations: Clinical trial design has advanced steadily over several decades. Yet the infrastructure for clinical trial data collection remains expensive and labor intensive and limits the amount of evidence that can be collected to inform whether and how inter…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AI042574

  NIH · $1.2M · 2001

• The Addis Ababa University-Johns Hopkins University Research Ethics Training Program in Ethiopia (AAU-JHU RETP)

  NIH · $6.2M · 2000–2030

• NIH Grant R21AI074005

  NIH · $582k · 2012

Frequent coauthors

• Ruth Faden

  Johns Hopkins University

  101 shared

• Jeremy Sugarman

  70 shared

• Joseph Ali

  Johns Hopkins University

  52 shared

• Adnan A. Hyder

  Milken Institute

  47 shared

• Peter J. Pronovost

  43 shared

• Nanette M. Schwann

  University of South Florida

  42 shared

• Marc S. Kanchuger

  NYU Langone Health

  42 shared

• Holly A. Taylor

  36 shared

Awards & honors

• Elected Member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Ac…
• Fellow of the Hastings Center
• Chair of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB

Similar researchers at Johns Hopkins University

• Mary Catherine Beachh-87