Takunda Matose, MBe, PhD

Research Ethicist, Ethics Center
Assistant Professor, UC Department of Pediatrics
Affiliated Faculty, UC Department of Philosophy

takunda.matose@cchmc.org

About

Biography

I am a researcher and bioethicist focused on healthcare justice, health inequalities and research ethics. I also study the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic and genomic research. I have been a researcher for over 16 years and began working at Cincinnati Children's in 2024.

My research explores how the complex conceptual and physiological dimensions of social categories like race, gender and disability influence people's motivations for seeking healthcare and how that impacts health outcomes. I also aim to determine what we owe them as a matter of healthcare justice.

I began thinking about this area of research when I realized that some health problems can only be understood by looking beyond individual patients to the health of the populations they belong to. This interest led me to explore the social dynamics that impact personal health.

It has been my honor to receive the Donchin and Holmes Emerging Scholar Prize from the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (2022), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's Award (2016) and to be named the Edmond J. Safra Joint Fellow-in-Residence at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (2022).

Services and Specialties

Ethics Center

Interests

Health care justice; health inequality; research ethics; ethical, legal, and social implications of genetic and genomic research

Publications

Incompletely Theorized Agreement and Accommodated Disagreement in the Surrogate Wars. Matose, T. HEC Forum. 2025; 37(4):507-515.

Bioethics and Incarceration. Matose, T; Lanphier, E. In: Bioethical Responsibilities in Twenty-First Century Crises. Bloomsbury Academic; 2025:81-97.

Contemporary Public Health in Africa Through a Philosophical and Bioethical Lens. Matose, T. In: International Public Health Policy and Ethics. Springer Nature; 2023:319-328.

The Anti-Vaxxer as a Moral Equal. Matose, T. Philosophy Today. 2023; 67(1):51-65.

Pandemics and Race. Matose, T; Taylor, PC. In: Ethical Public Health Policy Within Pandemics. Springer Nature; 2022:95-115.

Rights Don't Stand Alone: Responsibility for Rights in a Pandemic. Matose, T; Lanphier, E. American Journal of Bioethics. 2020; 20(7):169-172.

(Re)Imagining (Re)Habilitation: An Argument from Death Row. Lanphier, E; Matose, T; Abdur'rahman, AA. Public Philosophy Journal. 2019; 2(2).

Exploring the phenotypic consequences of tissue specific gene expression variation inferred from GWAS summary statistics. Barbeira, AN; Dickinson, SP; Bonazzola, R; Zheng, J; Wheeler, HE; Torres, JM; Torstenson, ES; Shah, KP; Garcia, T; Edwards, TL; Stahl, EA; Huckins, LM; Nicolae, DL; Cox, NJ; Im, HK. Nature Communications. 2018; 9(1):1825.

Identifying cis-mediators for trans-eQTLs across many human tissues using genomic mediation analysis. Yang, F; Wang, J; Pierce, BL; Chen, LS. Genome Research. 2017; 27(11):1859-1871.

Co-expression networks reveal the tissue-specific regulation of transcription and splicing. Saha, A; Kim, Y; Gewirtz, ADH; Jo, B; Gao, C; Mcdowell, IC; Engelhardt, BE; Battle, A. Genome Research. 2017; 27(11):1843-1858.