About

Jean Cadigan is Associate Professor of Social Medicine and a core faculty member in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She then completed postdoctoral appointments in medical anthropology and human development.  Her teaching and research interests focus broadly on clinical and research ethics.

As an investigator in UNC’s Center for Genomics and Society, she studies the ethical, legal, social, and policy implications of translating genomic research into clinical care. She has designed and conducted multimethod projects involving surveys and interviews with participants and investigators of genetic research studies about issues such as return of individual research results, ownership of biospecimens, and biobanking.  With Eric Juengst, she currently leads a study on ethical and governance challenges of human genome editing research.  She has also conducted studies on educating medical trainees in clinical ethics.

Dr. Cadigan currently serves as the Research Director of the Clinical Ethics Service for UNC’s Hospital Ethics Committee. She also serves on the Research Ethics Consultation Service through the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS).