About

Adam Seth Levine is a SNF Agora Professor of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on the science of collaboration in democratic life, exploring when and how people with diverse expertise and experience work together to improve communities. He investigates the role of science in democratic decision-making and the barriers that can hinder collaborative relationships, as well as strategies to overcome these barriers. His work aims to surface and meet unmet desires for civic collaboration, particularly in areas related to public health and social determinants of health, including local public health policy, child and family policy, mental health, aging, bioethics, neuroscience, and more. Prior to his current focus, Levine studied the psychology of persuasion, specifically how political rhetoric can inadvertently demobilize people. His book, 'American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction,' published in 2015, examines this topic through experiments and psychology, and was awarded a Best Book Award by the American Political Science Association. Levine is deeply committed to public engagement, collaborating with nonprofit organizations across multiple countries to design and conduct research. He is also the president and co-founder of research4impact, a nonprofit organization that fosters collaborative relationships between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, helping to create over 350 new collaborations. At Johns Hopkins, he teaches courses on science and democracy, civic life, and public health policy, integrating his research insights into his teaching to inform and inspire students and practitioners alike.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Nursing
• Criminology
• Virology

Selected publications

• Toward a Safer World by 2040

  JAMA · 2025-11-03 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  Importance: Since the start of the 21st century, more than 800 000 firearm deaths and more than 2 million firearm injuries have occurred in the US. All categories of firearm violence-homicide, suicide, unintentional-result in reverberating harms to individuals, families, communities, and society. The collective responsibility of society is to safeguard the health and safety of its members, including from firearm harms. The JAMA Summit on Firearm Violence convened 60 thought leaders from a wide array of disciplines to chart an innovations roadmap that will lead to substantial reductions in firearm harms by 2040. Observations: The vision for 2040 is a country where firearm violence is substantially reduced and where all people and communities report feeling safe from firearm harms. The vision centers on practical solutions with an understanding of the country's constitutional protections for firearm ownership. Achieving the 2040 vision will require expansion of proven evidence-based strategies and the development of new, innovative approaches rooted in equity, accountability, and collective responsibility. Discussions centered on projecting a safer world, community violence interventions, technologic innovations, federal and state-level oversight of firearms, ethical considerations, and primordial prevention of firearm violence. The Summit charted a roadmap of 5 essential actions in the next 5 years to achieve this vision: (1) focus on communities and change fundamental structures that lead to firearm harms, (2) harness technological strengths responsibly, (3) change the narrative around firearm harms, (4) take a whole-government and whole-society approach, and (5) spark a research revolution on preventing firearm harms. Conclusions and Relevance: A safer world will require investing in the discovery, implementation, and scaling of solutions that reduce firearm harms and center on the people and communities most affected by firearm violence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vaccines and the 2024 US Presidential Election

  JAMA Health Forum · 2025-12-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  This survey study reports on the vaccine-related views of voters surveyed soon after the 2024 US presidential election.

  PublisherDOI

• More money, more questions: How caregivers spent the expanded child tax credit

  Children and Youth Services Review · 2025-03-13

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Policymakers' engagement with ethicists to improve public health in the United States

  Preventive Medicine Reports · 2025-08-21

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Objective: To determine how policymakers interact with bioethicists, their interest in future engagement, and their motivation and hesitations to do so. Methods: = 358). Surveys assessed the prevalence of policymakers' current interactions with bioethicists, unmet desire to engage with them more (and on which policy topics), and hesitations about the value of engaging with them when facing public health challenges. Results: Only 12.1 % of elected policymakers (95 % CI: 9.0 %,16.3 %), 6.6 % of managers (95 % CI: 4.2 %,10.1 %), and 14.2 % of civil servants (95 % CI: 11.0 %,18.3 %) reported recent interaction with a bioethicist. Yet 40.1 % of elected policymakers (95 % CI: 34.8 %,45.6 %), 40.0 % of managers (95 % CI: 34.1 %,46.2 %), and 47.9 % of civil servants (95 % CI: 42.5 %,53.3 %) expressed an unmet desire for more direct engagement. Partisan differences were present, with Democrats in each sample expressing more unmet desire. Key hesitations to interacting with bioethicists were a perception they would push a political agenda and not share practical information. Conclusions: Many policymakers wish to seek counsel from those within the bioethics community as they work to promote and protect the health of their community, despite low levels of reported engagement. Amidst widespread calls for more ethically-informed public health policymaking, there is a key opportunity for bioethicists to influence and shape public policy at sub-national levels.

  PublisherDOI

• Local Sustainability Officers’ Desire to Collaborate for Climate Action

  Sustainability and Climate Change · 2025-02-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  As local communities increasingly bear the brunt of a changing climate, local sustainability officials face complex decisions about how to respond and prepare. Collaborative relationships with university-based researchers are often valuable and favored but do not always develop organically. In this descriptive study, we ask: Do sustainability policymakers have the collaborative relationships they need? Or is there unmet desire to collaborate with researchers to advance climate action? Starting with a well-defined set of research-intensive (R1) universities in the United States committed to policy engagement, we identified local sustainability policymakers adjacent to these institutions as our study population. Through 42 semi-structured elite interviews with municipal and county sustainability policymakers in the United States, we surfaced their top sustainability-related challenges, whether they are collaborating with the local R1 university on them, and, if not, whether they have unmet desire to do so. We found that 81% of policymakers expressed unmet desire to collaborate on at least one of their sustainability policy challenges. Key challenges associated with unmet desire to collaborate relate to resource constraints, lack of political support, and internal processes. Top research needs include benchmarks and case studies, research on return-on-investment, and guidance on effective climate communication strategies. Importantly, most sustainability professionals desired both informal knowledge exchange and formal partnerships with shared accountability. Our findings provide actionable information for researchers seeking to engage in climate policy efforts at the local level.

  PublisherDOI

• A Theory of Relationality

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-03-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter provides an overview of the theory of relationality – the idea that people care about how others relate to them, and whether they can successfully relate to others – and how potential collaborators can be uncertain about these relational aspects. "Relating to others" captures both the information to be shared, and also the experience of interacting. Key to the theory of relationality, as it applies to potential collaborators with diverse forms of expertise, is that status-based stereotypes can drive a wedge between having expertise and having that expertise be socially recognized. This chapter builds up to a series of hypotheses about how potential collaborators care about the information to be shared and the experience of interacting when choosing whether to engage in new collaborative relationships with diverse thinkers. It also identifies several possible interventions for fostering valuable new collaborative relationships.

  PublisherDOI

• The Link between Relationality and Collaborative Relationships

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-03-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter uses a case comparison to show the behavioral consequences of uncertainty about relationality – how it prevents new collaborative relationships that people would value from forming in the first place.

  PublisherDOI

• Step-by-Step Guide for Conducting One Type of Formal Collaboration: A New Research Partnership

  2024-03-14

  other1st authorCorresponding

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Surfacing and Meeting Unmet Desire for New Collaborative Relationships

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-03-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter tests two ways of overcoming uncertainty about relationality – having potential collaborators directly communicate how they will relate to each other, and using third parties such as matchmakers and boundary spanners. Both are useful for creating valuable new collaborative relationships, especially between people who begin as strangers. In addition, this chapter also presents evidence showing the impact of new collaborative relationships on strategic decision-making. Data in this chapter come from a variety of national surveys, field experiments, and case comparisons.

  PublisherDOI

• Collaborate Now!

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-03-14 · 4 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Those who seek change in civic life have much in common: they each bring valuable expertise to the table and need to strategize with others about what to do. That's why new collaborative relationships between diverse thinkers are essential. Yet they're difficult to form. Collaborate Now! presents a new argument about why that is, along with tools to foster them anew. As with any form of voluntary civic engagement, these relationships require time and motivation. Yet on top of that, collaborators often start off as strangers, and are uncertain about relationality: whether they'll relate to each other in ways that are meaningful and brimming with interaction. Using case studies, field experiments, interviews, and observational data, this book provides a rich understanding of the collaborative relationships needed to tackle civic challenges, how uncertainty about relationality can produce an unmet desire for them, and actionable tools to surface and meet this desire.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nelly Joseph‐Mathurin

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  49 shared

• Om V. Singh

  Johns Hopkins University

  49 shared

• Kenneth Aldape

  National Institutes of Health

  49 shared

• Richard L. Huganir

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  49 shared

• Mohit Rana

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  49 shared

• William R. Bell

  Boston University

  49 shared

• Randall J. Bateman

  Washington University in St. Louis

  49 shared

• Yoshiko Nakano

  University of Tokyo Hospital

  49 shared

Awards & honors

• E. E. Schattschneider Award for the best dissertation on Ame…
• 2016 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Ass…