Nanette Elster, JD, MPH, is the John B. Francis Co-Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics.

She is also a Professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Healthcare Leadership, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, where she teaches courses in pediatric ethics, oral health ethics, genetics and ethics, professionalism, and disability ethics.  She also supervises the graduate program’s master’s and doctoral capstone courses. She has spoken nationally and internationally and is the author of numerous articles on the legal, health policy and ethical implications of a range of public health issues. She has appeared on such media staples as CNN, Good Morning America, the Today Show, NPR and Chicago Tonight. More recently, she has been quoted in various media outlets, such as Forbes, Insider, and BMJ.

She is the legal consultant to the Committee on Bioethics for the American Academy of Pediatrics.  She was the Manager of Ethics Outreach for the American Dental Association. She also serves on the board of the Alliance for Fertility Preservation. She served from 2016-2020 on the executive board of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics and is currently a board member for the Academy of Professionalism in Health Care. She also serves on the ethics committee of NorthShore University Health System. In 2017, she received an honorary fellowship to the American College of Dentists, the highest honor the ACD awards to non-dentists.  She was director of content and editor of JACD.

She co-edited with Kayhan Parsi Transitioning to Adulthood with Autism: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues which was published by Springer in 2022.

She received her BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, her JD from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and her MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health.