Tel: 215-573-4519
E-mail: jlschwa2@mail.med.upenn.edu

Links:
www.vaccineethics.org

Education
MBE - University of Pennsylvania
AM - University of Pennsylvania (History and Sociology of Science)
AB - Princeton University (Classics)

Research Interests

Vaccination programs and policy, public health ethics, history of medicine and public health, American health policy, global health, decision-making in medicine and public health

About

Jason L. Schwartz is an Associate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics. His research examines ethical, historical, and policy issues in public health, with a particular focus on vaccines and vaccination programs. He joined the Center for Bioethics in 2005 and currently directs its research activities related to vaccine ethics and policy.

Schwartz is the co-author of the chapter titled “Ethics” in Vaccines (Elsevier, 2008, 2012), the leading textbook of vaccine science and policy. Other publications on topics in public health policy and ethics have appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Michigan Law Review First Impressions, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, and elsewhere. His current research examines how policy-makers and expert advisors have evaluated issues of risk and benefit in the development of specific vaccine policies from the 1970s to the present. This project is supported by The Greenwall Foundation.

He is the editor of www.vaccineethics.org, the vaccine news and information website launched by the Center for Bioethics in 2006 and also supported by The Greenwall Foundation.

Schwartz is a Research Analyst at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues in Washington, DC. He contributed to the Commission’s research and published reports on synthetic biology and emerging technologies (2010) and U.S. Public Health Service-led STD research in Guatemala in the 1940s (2011).

Schwartz is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in 20th-century American health policy, medicine, and public health. His dissertation, “External Factors: Advisory Committees, Decision-Making, and American Public Health, 1962-1999,” examines the emergence and influence of expert advisory committees in the development of U.S. biomedical regulation and policy, particularly regarding pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he received an A.B. in classics, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received master's degrees in bioethics (MBE) and the history and sociology of science (AM).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Schwartz JL, Caplan AL. “Vaccination refusal: Ethics, individual rights, and the common good.” Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice. 2011; 38(4), doi: 10.1016/j.pop.2011.07.009.

Schwartz JL, Caplan AL. “Ethics of vaccination programs.” Current Opinion in Virology. 2011; 1(4):263-267.

Schwartz JL. “HPV vaccination’s second act: Promotion, competition, and compulsion.” American Journal of Public Health. 2010; 100:1841-1844.

Schwartz JL. “Lessons and opportunities for presidential bioethics commissions.” The Good Society. 2010; 19(1):10-15.

Schwartz JL. “Disease control policy: Individual rights versus the common good,” in The Penn Center Guide to Bioethics. V. Ravitsky, A. Fiester, and A. Caplan (eds.); New York: Springer, 2009, 585-594.

Schwartz JL. “Unintended consequences: The primacy of public trust in vaccination,” Michigan Law Review First Impressions. 2009; 107:100-105, http://www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/fi/107/schwartz.pdf

Caplan AL, Schwartz JL. “Ethics,” in Vaccines. S.A. Plotkin, W. Orenstein, and P. Offit (eds.); 5th Edition, Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2008, 1683-1688; 6th Edition, 2012, in press.

Schwartz JL, Caplan AL, Faden RA, Sugarman J. “Lessons from the failure of human papillomavirus vaccine state requirements.” Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 2007; (82):360-363.