Ethics, Equity, and Gender
Latest News

New Grant from the NIH Will Advance Education in Gender and Global Health at Johns Hopkins
Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health received funds from the NIH to provide training and advance research and implementation skills in gender and global health. The project, called Applied Curriculum in Gender and Equity Skills (ACES), will be led by Anna Kalbarczyk, DrPH ’20, MPH, assistant scientist, and Rosemary Morgan, PhD, MSc, associate scientist, in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health.

Johns Hopkins Researchers Receive NIH Grant to Help Establish a Bioethics Training Program
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University received a grant from the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center called the Fogarty African Bioethics Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program (FAB-PDF), a 5-year, $1.2 million grant that provides advanced bioethics training for scholars from sub-Saharan Africa.

40 Washington, D.C.-Based Endeavors Receive Support From University's Nexus Awards Program
Forty wide-ranging projects and programs to be anchored at Johns Hopkins University's new home in Washington, D.C., have been selected to receive funding support from the university's Nexus Awards program.
Ethics, Equity, and Gender in the Health Systems Program
A key priority of our research in health systems is to ensure and support social justice measures alongside health impacts, particularly for marginalized communities. We work to mitigate inequalities in access to health services and promote health equity.
In our research, service, and teaching, we emphasize the need to understand and address a wide range of ethical challenges relevant to public health practice and research in low- and middle-income countries. Our faculty study how to maximize the benefit of public health research and practice, while developing appropriate risk mitigation strategies, especially when our work involves vulnerable populations. Faculty also partner with institutions globally to support the development and operation of ethics training programs and seek to improve collective understandings for what it means to be respectful and effective health system researchers and public health professionals.
Our faculty also specialize in gender and health systems, studying how gendered power relations create inequities within different areas of the health system and how the intersection of social stratifiers—such as gender, age, race and ethnicity—leads to different experiences of disadvantage and marginalization within the health system. Our research in this domain encompasses both clients using the health system as well as those working in the health system.
Meet some of our ethics, equity, and gender faculty

Joseph Ali, JD, studies how to conduct global public health research and practice that maximally respects ethical values in an increasingly interconnected digital world.

Rosemary Morgan, PhD, MSc, studies the role of gender inequities on health, wellbeing, and public health interventions.

Anju Malhotra, PhD, connects research with practice to shape smart, scalable strategies for advancing gender equality in health, education, & opportunity in the global South.

Georgia J. Michlig, PhD ’19, is a mixed methodologist researching mental health globally, including the impact of physical trauma, humanitarian disaster, migration, and the workplace.
Examples of Latest Projects
Johns Hopkins University-Addis Ababa University Research Ethics Training Program: JHU-AAU RETP is a U.S. National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center-funded partnership designed to support individual and institutional research ethics capacity at AAU. The program has a central emphasis on creating a new track in research ethics within AAU’s MPH program and training cohorts of trainees within the program, providing academic and research mentorship.
Assessing social justice in economic evaluation to scale up novel MDR-TB regimens: Funded by the US National Institutes of Health, this study of people’s experiences with treatment for multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) combined philosophical inquiry and qualitative research. The study team used their findings to develop a step-by-step analytic technique for assessing social justice in health policy decisions alongside traditional measures of clinical risk-benefit and health equity.
Featured Publications and Reports
Acting on sex and gender in medical innovation is good for business
BMJ | June 2023
A social cure for COVID-19: Importance of networks in combatting socio-economic and emotional health challenges in informal settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Social Sciences | February 2023
Rehabilitation services must include support for sexual and gender-based violence survivors in Ukraine and other war- and conflict-affected countries
Health Policy and Planning | January 2023
Scoping 'sex' and 'gender' in rehabilitation: (Mis)representations and effects
International Journal for Equity in Health | December 2022
The burdens of participation: A mixed-methods study of the effects of a nutrition-sensitive agriculture program on women's time use in Malawi
World Development | December 2022