Ellen Fox, MD: Chief Ethics in Health Care Officer

Ellen Fox, MD, is an internal medicine physician who has served as VHA's Chief Officer for ethics in health care since 1999. Her areas of special expertise include ethics consultation, ethics education, ethics evaluation, organizational ethics, and ethical issues in end-of-life care. Originally from Arlington, VA, she majored in Psychology at Yale, graduated from Harvard Medical School, and received her Internal Medicine Residency training at Yale, where she also served as Chief Resident. After completing a fellowship in ethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Fox joined the MacLean Center's core faculty. She next moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she served three years as Director of the Program in Clinical Ethics and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Medical Education. In 1997 she became Director of End-of-Life Care at the American Medical Association's Institute for Ethics. In this capacity, she led the Institute's Education for Physicians on End of Life Care (EPEC) Project. In 1999 Dr. Fox moved to Washington, DC and assumed her current role with the Department of Veterans Affairs.