About
Dr. Jonathan Ellen
HEALTH CARE Entrepreneur, SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL EPIDEMIOLOGIST, PRIMARY CARE PEDIATRICIAN, and RETIRED PROFESSOR And CEO JOHNS HOPKINS ALL CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Dr. Jonathan Ellen is a leader and innovator in the health field, combining his unique thirty years experiences as a practicing physician, respected hospital executive, world class epidemiologist, public health practitioner and scientist to raise the value of care and reduce health inequities.
Currently, Dr. Ellen is the CEO and Founder of Labrador Health (DBA Connections for Health), a primary care case management services company primarily focused on addressing social and behavioral health needs of patients. By addressing these barriers, Labrador assists primary care practices in achieving high value care, i.e., improve quality of care and reduced utilization as well as costs of care, and removing some of the structural factors that lead to racial/ethnic inequities in health.
In addition, Dr. Ellen is co-chair of the advisory board for Philabundance—the largest food bank in Philadelphia and a contributing writer to several prominent on-line magazine on topics related to the COVID pandemic.
Prior to his founding of Labrador Health, Dr. Ellen served as the president, CEO and physician-in-chief of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) in St. Petersburg, Florida, as well as the vice dean and professor of pediatrics with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Chairman of All Children’s Specialty Physicians. He led the transformation of the hospital into an academic medical center. Today, JHACH is the only hospital named Johns Hopkins outside of Baltimore.
Under Dr. Ellen’s executive leadership, JHACH increased employee engagement; improved patient experience; reduced rates of hospital acquired infections; regularly exceeded annual financial targets; renegotiated managed care contracts; drafted and enforced the JHACH Culture Statement; improved the safety culture; successfully advocated for increased state Medicaid funding and support for special projects, such as the treatment of opiate addicted babies; advanced the JHACH’s journey to becoming a Magnet hospital; improved nurse staffing cost-effectively; and collaborated with several regional and community hospitals and providers throughout the Central West Coast of Florida to ensure newborns and children through the age of 21 had access to highest quality and optimal care.
As the hospital’s top executive, Dr. Ellen was instrumental in moving JHACH to a value-based approach to care. At the center of this approach was ensuring that the level and location of care best matched the needs of the patient and that the care was safe and of the highest quality. During his tenure at JHACH, he and his team established the hospital’s first pediatric residency and fellowship programs; recruited world-class physicians, researchers and staff dedicated to a physician-led and patient-centered care delivery model; and established multi-disciplinary, collaborative institutes focused on maternal, fetal and neonatal medicine, neurosciences and mental health, oncology and cardiovascular disease, several of which are ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report. In 2018, JHACH opened a 220,000-square foot research and education building to house the institutes and training programs.
Throughout his tenure at JHACH, Dr. Ellen worked directly with the Chief Development Officer to launch a fundraising campaign to fund the academic transformation. Together, they were responsible for raising $150 million in philanthropic contributions that directly benefited the hospital and those patients it serves.
Dr. Ellen expanded Johns Hopkins All Children’s community health efforts with a focus on social determinents of health to prevent asthma, obesity and infant mortality. As a pioneer of this approach and a leader of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Intervention, he served as principal investigator for Connect to Protect®, a community coalition-based program. His past research focusing on preventing sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, in adolescents and the structural and environmental factors associated with racial disparities in disease transmission was invaluable in support of this cause.
Dr. Ellen also worked with the leaders of the University of South Florida (USF) Morsani College of Medicine to strengthen its research, its residency program for which JHACH is a teaching site and the overall relationships between Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and USF. Because of his demonstrated commitment to USF, the Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida asked Dr. Ellen to lead the consolidation of accreditation of three USF campuses in the region in 2018.
Additionally, he has served as a leader on numerous charitable and educational boards, including Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida (Chair, Board of Trustees), the Foundation for Healthy St. Petersburg (Chair, Board of Trustees), St. Pete Innovation District (President), Florida Council of 100, Florida Hospital Association (Board of Trustees) and Straz Center for Performing Arts (Board of Trustees).
Prior to joining the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1999, Dr. Ellen was a member of the faculty at University of California, San Francisco. He was named vice dean for All Children’s Hospital in 2011 and CEO of All Children’s Hospital in 2012. He previously led the Center for Child and Community Health at Johns Hopkins and was director of the Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
In addition, he developed and directed STD/HIV prevention and case management programs for San Francisco and Baltimore City Health Departments. He conducted multiple federally-funded social determinants of health studies; analyzed big data; investigated behavioral health and case management approaches to care; conducted clinical trials; evaluated medical diagnostics; and engaged in care seeking research.
In July 2019, Dr. Ellen retired as a professor of pediatrics at the JHU School of Medicine and a professor of epidemiology and population, family and reproductive health in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has trained more than 40 pre- and post-doctoral fellows in adolescent medicine and public health. Throughout his career, he has received more than $25 million in research awards and contracts from the CDC, NIH and other institutions and foundations. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed research articles, chapters and editorials.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he received his medical degree from Temple University and completed an internship and residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Ellen completed a fellowship in adolescent medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), followed by fellowships in sexually transmitted diseases at UCSF, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
He currently resides in Washington, D.C. area.