Steven Joffe, MD, MPH (he/him) is a pediatric oncologist and bioethicist who is currently the Art and Ilene Penn Professor and Chair of Medical Ethics & Health Policy and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is also Director of the Penn Postdoctoral Training Program in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of Genetics and Genomics.
Dr. Joffe’s research addresses ethical challenges in clinical and translational investigation and in genomic medicine and science. He has led NIH-, PCORI- and foundation-funded projects to study the responsibilities of principal investigators in multicenter trials, accountability in the research enterprise, children’s capacity to engage in research decisions, return of genetic results to research participants, integration of whole-exome sequencing into the care of cancer patients, strategies for diagnosing germline risk among young adults with cancer, and the nature and challenges of learning health systems. He has coauthored over 200 articles addressing these topics. He has served on advisory committees to the FDA, the Office of Human Research Protections, and the National Human Genome Research Institute, and was a member of the Operation Warp Speed COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Data and Safety Monitoring Board. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Pediatric Society, and The Hastings Center.
Joffe attended Harvard College, received his MD from the University of California San Francisco, and his MPH from UC Berkeley. He trained in pediatrics at UCSF and in pediatric hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.
