James C. Thomas

James (Jim) Thomas is an emeritus professor of epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He currently teaches courses in global health annually at the French École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique. As a social epidemiologist, he researched the effects of social forces such as mass incarceration on the distribution of infectious diseases in communities. Dr. Thomas was the principal author of the first American public health code of ethics and was an ethics advisor to the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He received from the American Public Health Association the Distinguished Career Award in Ethics. He has worked on epidemiology or ethics in more than forty countries. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina.