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Karen Meagher, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Genomics and Society in the Department of Social Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She is currently working on research ethics and public policy implications of preventive genomic screening for adults. She is also collaborating on a social science and ethics project integrated into Phase I HIV treatment interruption trials in Thailand. She has published numerous articles on bioethics in journals such as Public Health Reports, the American Journal of Bioethics, and Developing World Bioethics. From 2012-2015 she worked as a Senior Policy and Research Analyst on the staff of President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. While on the staff, she contributed to federal reports on such topics as incidental findings in clinical, research, and direct-to-consumer settings; ethics and the 2014-2015 Ebola virus disease epidemic; and improving bioethics policy-making and ethics education in the United States. While a graduate student at Michigan State University (MSU), she served as an undergraduate advisor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences; and as a reviewer on Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) for MSU and the Michigan Department of Community Health. She received a B.A. in biology from Hamilton College in 2004, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from MSU in 2012. Her Ph.D. dissertation was entitled A Virtue Approach to Public Health Ethics.

Twitter @Karenthetical

Karen Meagher on LinkedIn

Recent Publications

Meagher, K.M., McGowan M.L., Settersten, R.A., Fishman J.R., Juengst E.T. 2017. Precisely where are we going? Charting the new terrain of precision prevention. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics doi: 10.1146/annurev-genom-091416-035222

Meagher, K.M. and Lisa M. Lee. 2016. Public Health Perspectives and Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues: Integrating public health and public bioethics. Public Health Reports, 131:44-51.

Meagher, K.M. 2016. Book Review of “Public Health Ethics, Second Edition.” Stephen Holland. Teaching Philosophy.

Meagher, K.M. 2015. Seeking context for the duty to rescue: Contractualism and trust in research institutions. American Journal of Bioethics,15(2):18-20.

Senior Policy and Research Analyst, staff contributor to Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. 2015, Feb. Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response. Washington, DC: PSCBI.