Dr. Christine Grady is a nurse-bioethicist and a senior investigator who currently serves as the Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. She has authored more than 175 papers in the fields of biomedical and bioethics literature and authored or edited several books, including, “The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics.”
Dr. Grady was born and raised in a family of academics in Livingston, New Jersey. She earned her Bachelor of Science in nursing and biology from Georgetown University in 1974, a Master of Science in nursing from Boston College in 1978, and in 1993 returned to Georgetown for her doctorate.
During the 1980s, Dr. Grady worked to fight AIDS by serving on President Ronald Reagan’s commission on the HIV epidemic. Her thesis was published as the book, “The Search for an AIDS Vaccine: Ethical Issues in the Development and Testing of a Preventive HIV Vaccine.”
Dr. Grady’s research contributions are both theoretical and observational. She focuses primarily on the ethics of clinical research, including informed consent, vulnerability, study design, recruitment, and international research ethics, as well as ethical issues faced by nurses and other healthcare providers. Her work is known around the world, and she has taught extensively.
Dr. Grady served from 2010 to 2017 as a commissioner on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Academy of Nursing. She is also a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. She received the National Institutes of Health CEO Award in 2017 and its Director's Award in 2015 and 2017.
Dr. Grady is married to Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. She considers her family her biggest achievement, followed by her career.
In a 2020 interview with InStyle, she said, “My proudest achievement is probably my kids. And I'm also proud of what I've done at work. I've come a long way in terms of my career. When I first started, bioethics didn't really exist. And now I'm the head of the department of bioethics, and I think I have made some useful contributions to the field.”