Kenneth Fox, MD

Ken Fox does community pediatrics. Currently, he serves as Chief Health Officer of Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In this capacity, he is the district’s principal spokesperson on health issues and oversees a portfolio that includes Health Promotion, Health Services, Health Information Management, and the Children & Family Benefits Unit, which enrolls students and families in public health insurance and the food stamps program.Appointed dually to CPS and Chicago Department of Public Health in 2016,

Dr. Fox is a pediatrician with 30 years of experience. He attended the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, trained at Boston Children’s Hospital, and completed fellowship at Penn in an earlier iteration of the RWJF Clinical Scholars Program. He then joined the faculty of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and later Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He has written and lectured widely on cultural and social justice issues in health and care, and has collaborated with Partners in Health and Physicians for Human Rights. He returned to Chicago in 2004 to Erie Family Health Center with appointments at Northwestern/Lurie Children's, and later spent eight years in private practice with an appointment at University of Chicago.

He is the recipient of fellowships from the Institute for Health & Social Justice, Kellogg, Fulbright, and the Open Society Institute. Fully alive to the social determinants of health, Dr. Fox works to eliminate health-related barriers to learning and drive better health and educational outcomes for Chicago’s students. He has championed Medicaid enrollment among CPS students, bringing new intensity of focus and resources to connect children to medical insurance and, in turn, to a “medical home." His interests in global health have also led him to work in Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and South Africa.