Michaela Johns was a health studies student at the University of Waterloo in Canada when a previous injury caused her to rethink her career trajectory. In her final years as an undergraduate, she became interested in bioethics and research about disability and the philosophy of suffering.
Johns discovered the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics’ Master of Bioethics (MBE) program and immediately connected with faculty. She applied for the program and a new scholarship: tuition support for full-time MBE students as part of the Ruth R. Faden Fund for Education in Bioethics, also known as the Faden Fund.
As an international student, she says wasn’t optimistic about her chances of being named one of two inaugural scholarship recipients. But as a first-generation student, she knew funding postgraduate education on her own would be a challenge.
“The scholarship was what made coming to Hopkins possible,” says Johns, who earned her MBE degree in 2022. “It also gave me the boost of confidence to know that faculty had seen my application and believed that I had potential in this area. That was really helpful after losing a whole career path. I was experiencing a bit of uncertainty as to where to go next and what to do with my life, and I felt the support.”
Eva Bodin, who graduated along with Johns in 2022 and was the other inaugural recipient of the scholarship, echoes Johns’ thoughts. As a bioethics undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, she was torn between staying at Toronto for graduate school and pursuing an MBE at Hopkins. Bodin was drawn to the connections she could make with the Berman faculty, but the difference in tuition between the two institutions was a potential hurdle.
“The scholarship helped give me that push to go to Hopkins,” she says. “I thrive in smaller environments where you’re known by your professors, and that’s something I always craved. Receiving notice of the scholarship from Berman, I felt wanted and that I would be recognized as a student there.”
Nearly a year after finishing the program, both Johns and Bodin are continuing the work they started at Berman.
While at Hopkins, Johns articulated a novel conceptualization of the opioid withdrawal experience in a way that engenders sympathetic understanding and support for opioid agonist therapies such as buprenorphine and methadone. She’s now working as a junior bioethics consultant for a growing consulting company, and she is a research assistant with the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Thanks to an influential elective, Bioethics and the Law, Johns was inspired to further her education and has been accepted to law school.
“I just found it fascinating, the intersection between law and medicine and bioethics,” she says. “I really want to focus on health equity because I see the law as a powerful tool to advance health and balance out some of these health disparities.”
Health equity is also an interest of Bodin’s. During her time in the MBE program, she investigated racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths and also took courses at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. After graduation, Bodin began work in the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Division of Overdose Prevention. She’s now a fellow with the CDC’s Office of Public Health Ethics and Regulations, assisting with protocol review and exploring the ethics of biobanking and secondary-use research. Biobanking is the process by which samples of bodily fluid or tissues are collected for research use, and secondary-use research can often include research or testing not described in subjects’ original consent.
Bodin is also developing public health ethics training for CDC staff and working to establish ethical principles to guide wastewater surveillance practices. Wastewater surveillance is a public health tool that enables communities to understand disease trends, regardless of clinical testing coverage or test-seeking behaviors.
“Health equity has always been a very big interest of mine. And while at Hopkins, I did a practicum with the Center for Injury and Policy in rape prevention and education working with marginalized populations,” she says. “My focus has always been on addressing health disparities and advancing the health of vulnerable populations.”
Aimed at developing future leaders in bioethics, the Faden Fund was established in 2018 by Alexander Levi, a trustee emeritus of Johns Hopkins University and chair of the Berman Institute’s National Advisory Board, and his wife Vicki and supported by other generous donors. It honors Berman founder and inaugural director Ruth Faden.
“As Ruth stepped down as the inaugural director of the Berman Institute, we wanted to find a meaningful way to honor her lifetime of service, in creating the institute, to bioethics at Hopkins, and to the field,” Alexander Levi says. “This gift will create new leaders who will change the world in ways we can’t yet foresee.”
In addition to tuition support for MBE students, the fund also offers research and conference travel resources for PhD students, has helped create the newly established endowed Faden Professorship in Bioethics and Education, and supports leadership and training for leaders of bioethics programs through the Faden Scholars Program.
Faden continues to be a part of the Berman Institute as the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. She says words can’t adequately express what the Levis’ decision to name the endowment in her honor means.
“As they know, nothing is dearer to my professional heart than the training of future generations,” Faden says. “The Levis’ incredibly generous gift ensures that the Berman Institute will be able to continue to educate, in perpetuity, the future leaders of our field. I cannot imagine a more farsighted contribution, not only to our institution, but to bioethics and to what bioethics can contribute to the world.”
Five years after the fund’s establishment, Jeffrey Kahn, the Andreas C. Dracopoulous Director of the Berman Institute, says the impact of the transformational gift has only continued to grow.
“We have dramatically expanded our capacity to prepare leaders who will take on the most pressing and morally challenging bioethics issues of the day, and who will work to effect change when and where it is most needed,” he says.
Topics: Faculty and Staff, Students, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Promote and Protect Health, Support Scholars