Erika Blacksher, PhD

Erika Blacksher studies questions of justice raised by U.S. health inequalities and the potential of democratic deliberation to make health a shared value. Dr. Blacksher’s current scholarship focuses on health justice theory and intersectionality; poverty, whiteness, and health; and the science of democratic deliberation. Dr. Blacksher has published some 60 peer review articles and book chapters and given dozens of invited lectures in the US and abroad. She has presented her scholarship in venues such as the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; the Ethox Centre at Oxford University; and The Hastings Center. Dr. Blacksher's work in deliberative democracy has informed the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, World Bank, and Rand Organization. For the past decade she has collaborated with Indigenous scholars and Tribal nations to adapt, conduct, and assess democratic deliberations on questions that matter to Tribal communities. Dr. Blacksher has master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia’s bioethics program and undergraduate degrees in philosophy and journalism from the University of Kansas. After completing her doctorate, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University, New York City; Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, Garrison, NY; tenured faculty in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle; and the John B. Francis Endowed Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics, Kansas City, MO.

Erika Blacksher, PhD

Academic Title: 
Research Professor
Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine