Ellen-Marie Whelan, an assistant professor at the School of Nursing, is one of seven recipients of a 2003 Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship. The fellowship program gives health professionals and behavioral and social scientists with an interest in health the opportunity to participate in health policy processes at the federal level.

After an intensive three-month orientation, fellows receive full-time work assignments in either the legislative or the executive branch of the federal government. After the Washington work experience, fellows return to their respective institutions and are supported for two years to complete their continued development as health policy leaders.

Whelan has been at Johns Hopkins since 2000 and now holds a joint appointment with the School of Nursing and the university's Urban Health Institute. In 1993, Whelan started a nurse-run primary care clinic in Philadelphia. Her most recent project involves studying the efficacy of the primary care delivery system provided by the Johns Hopkins Health System in East Baltimore.