Bonnielin K. Swenor, PhD, MPH


Bonnielin Swenor is an associate professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and holds joint appointments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, which aims to shift the paradigm from ‘living with a disability’ to ‘thriving with a disability’. Motivated by her personal experience with a visual disability, her work takes a data-driven approach to advancing health equity for people with disabilities and promoting disability inclusion in higher education, STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine), public health, and research. Dr. Swenor has provided advice and expertise on disability data, equity, and inclusion to multiple organizations and agencies, was a speaker at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Summit on Equity and Excellence in STEMM, is chair of a National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee developing a series of workshops on disability inclusion in STEM, co-chaired the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities , and is a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ACD Health Equity Workgroup. Her work has been published in leading academic journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Lancet, and has been featured in multiple news outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and TIME magazine.