Maria Merritt
Assistant Professor
Core Faculty, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
Departmental Address
615 N. Wolfe Street / E8150
Mailing address: Health Systems Program, Suite E8132, Department of International Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore MD 21205
Research and Professional Experience
Maria Merritt is a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where she is a co-Associate Director of the Greenwall Fellowship Program in Bioethics and Health Policy, and a faculty affiliate and advisory board member of the Johns Hopkins-Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program.
Dr. Merritt's primary area of research interest is the ethics of public health research in low-resource settings, particularly regarding questions about whether, for what reasons, and to what extent researchers have ethical obligations to benefit individual research participants and host populations. A secondary area of research interest, in affiliation with the Moral Psychology Research Group (MPRG), is moral psychology: the study of feeling, thought, and action in morally significant contexts.
Keywords
Bioethics, Global Health, International Research Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Moral Psychology
Honors and Awards
Co-Investigator, NIH award number 1R01AI085147-01A1, 2010-14, "Ancillary Care in Community-Based Research: Deciding What to Do" (PI Holly A. Taylor; award issued by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics career development award, 2009-12, “Researchers’ Obligations in Community-Based Research: Resolving Dilemmas of Care”
Faculty Innovation Fund, 2007-08, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "Ancillary Care in Public Health Intervention Research in Resource-Limited Settings: Researchers' Practices and Decision-Making"(Co-PI Holly A. Taylor)
Faculty Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, 2005-06
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Clinical Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, 2000-02
Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, 1987-90
Selected Publications
Taylor HA, Merritt MW, "Provision of Community-Wide Benefits in Public Health Intervention Research: The Experience of Investigators Conducting Research in the Community Setting in South Asia," Developing World Bioethics, in press (2012)
Merritt MW, “Health Researchers’ Ancillary Care Obligations in Low-Resource Settings: How Can We Tell What Is Morally Required?” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 21 (4) (2011): 311-347
Taylor HA, Merritt MW, Mullany LC, “Ancillary Care in Public Health Intervention Research in Low-resource Settings: Researchers’ Practices and Decision-Making,” Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics (JERHRE), 6(3) (2011): 73-81
Labrique AB, Merritt MW, Bartlett LA, “Research Enrollment and Informed Consent,” letter, JAMA 306 (2011): 266
Merritt MW, Labrique AB, Katz J, Rashid M, West KP, Jr., Pettit J, "A Field Training Guide for Human Subjects Research Ethics," PLoS Medicine. 2010; 7(10): e1000349. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000349.
Merritt MW, Taylor HA, Mullany LC, "Ancillary Care in Community-Based Public Health Intervention Research", American Journal of Public Health. 2010; 100: 211-216
Hyder AA, Merritt MW, “Ancillary Care for Public Health Research in Developing Countries,” JAMA. 2009;302(4):429-431
Merritt M, "Aristotelean Virtue and the Interpersonal Aspect of Ethical Character", Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 23-49
Hyder A, Merritt M, Ali J, Tran N, Subramaniam K, Akhtar T, “Integrating Ethics, Health Policy and Health Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Case Studies from Malaysia and Pakistan”, Bulletin of the WHO 86 (2008): 606-611
Participants in the 2006 Georgetown University Workshop on the Ancillary-Care Obligations of Medical Researchers Working in Developing Countries, “The Ancillary-Care Obligations of Medical Researchers Working in Developing Countries”, PLoS Medicine 5(5) (2008): e90.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050090
Merritt M, "Global Health Research and Professional Ethics: Ancillary Care for Research Participants", Maryland Medicine, Summer 2007: 32-33
Merritt M, "Bioethics, Philosophy, and Global Health", Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics VII(2) (Summer 2007): 273-317
Merritt M and Grady C, “Reciprocity and Post-trial Access for Participants in Antiretroviral Therapy Trials”, AIDS 20 (2006): 1791-1794 Merritt M, “Moral Conflict in Clinical Trials”, Ethics 115 (2005): 306-330
Merritt M, “The Challenge of Clinical Empathy”, Journal of Clinical Ethics, 14 (2003): 283-285
Merritt M, “Emotional Reasoning”, Hastings Center Report 32 (2002): 45-46
Merritt M, “Virtue Ethics and Situationist Personality Psychology”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 3 (2000): 365-383
