Dr. Summer Johnson McGee graduated from Indiana University with two Bachelor of Arts degrees, Summa Cum Laude in Philosophy and in Bioethics, the latter an individualized major she designed, for which she received the Richard D. Young Award for Development of a New Major (2003) and the Herman B. Wells Most Outstanding Senior Award from the Chancellor of IU. She simultaneously completed undergraduate training in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford University in 2001-2002. At IU she received the Lilly Community Endowment Fellowship (4 years), and was Chancellor’s Scholar, Dean’s List (all semesters), Phi Beta Kappa, Golden Key, and Phi Eta Sigma.
Dr. Johnson McGee did her doctoral training in bioethics and health policy in the Berman Institute of Bioethics of The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to beginning her training at Hopkins, she was awarded a Fulbright to study stem cell ethics and policy. She also was a recipient of the (U.S. Government’s) Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship for philosophy. Her dissertation, “The Impact of Presidential bioethics commissions: an Assessment of Outcomes in Public bioethics” used social science methodology to examine the effect of bioethics commissions on public policy, research that she will reprise in the commissioned article on the History of Bioethics Commissions in the upcoming edition of Encyclopedia of Bioethics. She also conducted an international survey of bioethics commissions resulting in “National Bioethics Commissions and Research Ethics” chapter of Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics (with E Meslin). She received the Marcia Pines Award in Bioethics in Health Policy (best ethics & health policy paper) at Johns Hopkins.She also elected to intern at the Progressive Bioethics Initiative of the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC. She completed her graduate program in three years.
From 2006 she was Director of Graduate Studies for the online MS and JD/MS in Bioethics programs of Alden March Bioethics Institute, tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Ethics of Novel Technologies, Research and Innovation program (ENTRI). She served from 2007-2008 on Institutional Stem Cell Review Committee (ISCR; Rensselaer Polytechnic). After those two years as assistant professor, she was appointed directly to tenure-track Associate Professor of Health Policy & Management when she moved to the University of Kansas in 2010, and also served as Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Practical Bioethics through 2011. Dr. Johnson McGee presently serves on the graduate faculty of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy as Adjunct Associate Professor, where she is capstone coordinator for the masters and doctoral programs.
Dr. Johnson McGee’s recent peer-reviewed journal articles include Goldberg D. & McGee SJ, “Pain as a global public health priority” in BMC Public Health 11:770 (2011), McGee SJ et al., “Defining chronic pain ethics” in Pain Medicine 12:9 (2012), and McGee SJ, “The ideology and politicization in public bioethics” in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 20:1 (2011, 1-20). Some other representative peer-reviewed journal articles include Holly Taylor and SJ McGee, “The ethics of population-based research” in J Law Med Ethics 35:2 (2008); Johnson S, “Making public bioethics public” in Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 17:2 (2007); Johnson S et al., “Nanotechnology in Health Care: A Needs Assessment Regarding Ethics & Policy” in Harvard Health Policy Review 8:10 (2007); Johnson S, Kass NE et al., “Disclosure of personal medical information: differences among parents and affected adults for genetic and non-genetic conditions” in Genetic Testing 9:3 (2005).
She has also authored a number of encyclopedia entries, book chapters, essays and reviews. She authored the Nanotechnology entry in the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (2012), and with H. Taylor, R. Faden, and N. Kass, the Ethics of Public Health Research: Obligations to Communities entry in the International Encyclopedia of Public Health (2009). Her reviews have appeared in Nature Medicine and Hastings Center Report. She has given more than 25 invited talks at institutions across the world and a number of peer-reviewed talks at annual meetings of professional and academic associations e.g. ASBH, Midwest Political Science Association, and APPE.
Dr. Johnson McGee served the 2010 American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities program committee on subcommittees for health policy, public health ethics, and education. From 2008-2010 she reviewed for the American Public Health Association ethics SPIG. She has served on the Kansas City Regional Ethics Committee Consortium, the Children’s Mercy Hospital & Clinics Ethics Committee, and from 2005-6 was staff on the Research Ethics Consultation Service at Johns Hopkins. Summer is well known to those who write and read The American Journal of Bioethics for her work on all AJOB journals and as Executive Editor since 2008. She has been continuously responsible for all editorial activities of AJOB and its editorial office, including participation in the internal review process. As Co-Editor-in-Chief Dr. Johnson McGee will bring an eye for ethical issues in public health and extensive experience in qualitative methodologies in bioethics.