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Abbey Lowe, PhD, MA

Associate Professor, Department of Health Promotion
Scholar, Global Center for Health Security

Headshot of Abbey Lowe.

Abbey Lowe, PhD, MA is an associate professor in the Department of Health Promotion of the UNMC College of Public Health. She is affiliate faculty of Medical Humanities at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Abbey's interests are at the intersection of ethics, health policy, and health security, and her research focuses on ethics in public health emergencies. 

Education
  • 2022, PhD, University of Nebraska Medical Center
  • 2013, MA, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  • 2006, BA, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Research Interests

Abbey’s work lies at the intersection of ethics, health policy, and health security, with a particular focus on ethical decision-making in public health emergencies. Her research examines the challenges of allocating scarce resources during crises, emphasizing how the absence of consensus-driven guidance can exacerbate inequities, particularly for vulnerable populations. Abbey co-led the development of crisis standards of care planning for the state of Nebraska, collaborating with diverse stakeholders, including healthcare coalition leaders, EMS, state medical societies, and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. This effort resulted in a consensus-driven CSC guidance for the state of Nebraska designed to guide equitable decision-making during emergencies. Abbey has been an active voice in the conversations around CSC, presenting her work at national and internationsl forums.

Abbey's scholarship extends to ethical considerations for human subjects research in public health emergencies. As chair of research ethics for the Special Pathogens Research Network, she has led initiatives to streamline rapid review processes for human subjects research during crises. She played a key role in developing standard operating procedures for timely but substantive Institutional Review Board review for multisite research, which proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her research continues to focus on the appropriateness and effectiveness of IRB review in public health emergencies, as well as ethical considerationsl for response and research running in parallel. 

Selected Publications
  • Lowe AE, Kraft C, Kortepeter MG, Hansen KF, Sanger K, Johnson A, Grein JD, Martin J, Rousselle R, Garland JA, Spotts J. Developing a rapid response single IRB model for conducting research during a public health emergency. Health security. 2022 Jun 1;20(S1):S-60.
  • Lowe AE, Hewlett A, Schonfeld T. How Should Clinicians Respond to International Public Health Emergencies? AMA J Ethics. 2020 Jan 1;22(1):E16-21.doi: 10.1001/amajethics. 2020.16. PMID: 31958386.
  • Gordon BG, Lowe AE, Kratochvil CJ. Rapid Review of Therapy Protocols for Public Health Emergencies. Ethics Hum Res. 2024 Mar-Apr;46(2):16-21. doi: 10.1002/eahr.500203. PMID: 38446100.
  • Lowe AE, Voo TC, Lee LM, Gillespie KK, Feig C, Ferdinand AO, Mohapatra S, Brett-Major DM, Wynia MK. Uncertainty, scarcity and transparency: Public health ethics and risk communication in a pandemic. The Lancet Regional Health–Americas. 2022 Dec 1;16.
  • Lowe AE, Dineen KK, Mohapatra S. Structural discrimination in pandemic policy: essential protections for essential workers. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. 2022 Mar;50(1):67-75.
Professional Affiliations
  • American Journal of Bioethics and Humanities