Ellen-Marie Whelan, Associate Director of Health Policy and Senior Health Policy Analyst

Ellen-Marie Whelan, Ph.D. is a Senior Health Policy Analyst and Associate Director of Health Policy at American Progress. 

Previously, Dr. Whelan was the staff director for the Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, with Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD).  The subcommittee has oversight over issues including: pensions, the Older Americans Act, long-term care issues, family care giving, and general health of the aging population.  In this role she also covered Medicare, Medicaid, and the Food and Drug Administration for Senator Mikulski.  Dr. Whelan came to Capitol Hill as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow for the 2003-2004 academic year, where she was a legislative aide to Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). 

Before coming to D.C., Dr. Whelan was an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, where she held a joint appointment with the Urban Health Institute and the School of Nursing and was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania where she started an adolescent clinic in a community center in West Philadelphia.  For this effort she received the Secretary’s Award for Innovations in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, presented by Donna Shalala and was one of the first nurse practitioners in Pennsylvania to obtain her own Medicaid provider number.  Her research focuses on academic–community partnerships, safety-net providers, and primary care.

Dr. Whelan holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, a master’s degree in Nursing and a doctorate in Nursing and Health Policy from the University of Pennsylvania and has completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Primary Care Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
 

Email: emwhelan /@\ americanprogress.org

Articles by Ellen-Marie Whelan