Laura Beskow

Dr. Beskow received her BS in nutrition from Iowa State University and her MPH with a concentration in health law from Boston University. She next worked at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, and then received a Career Development Award through the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and worked with the CDC Office of Genetics and Disease Prevention. She completed her PhD in Health Policy and Administration, with a minor in Epidemiology, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005.

Dr. Beskow is currently an Associate Professor at the Duke University School of Medicine and Duke Clinical Research Institute, where her work focuses on ethics and policy issues in biomedical research—particularly human subjects issues in large-scale genomic and translational research. She has been a Principal Investigator on empirical studies of research recruitment, informed consent, confidentiality protections, the return of research results to participants and families, and the research use of electronic health records.

Nationally, she served on the Subpart A Subcommittee of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee for Human Research Protections, and on the Federal Advisory Committee for the National Children’s Study. At Duke she chairs the Ad Hoc Human Genetics Review Committee.