LAUSR

As part of Dr. Emanuel’s initial focus on improving end-oflife care during his time as a faculty member at Harvard, he joined 1 of 4 research groups across the country that were working to address the issue. In 1997, he became the founding chair of the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics and developed a world-leading training center for preand postdoctoral students and fellows. He led the department until 2011 and focused primarily on improving research regulations to incorporate ethics. Dr. Grady, who served as his deputy director, has fond memories of that period, including some of the travels that they took to lead workshops for colleagues around the world. “He’s very adventurous—we always found the most interesting things to do,” she says. “At one workshop in Brazil and Argentina, we met colleagues at the Iguazú Falls and he and I traveled on a raft on the one part of the falls that wouldn’t kill you. It was a wonderfully exhilarating experience.” After leaving the NIH, Dr. Emanuel served for 2 years in the Obama Administration as special advisor for health policy to the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He worked on numerous policy issues, including quality improvement, physician payments, and costs within the Affordable Care Act. He also initiated the process of revising research regulations and helped to shift forms of global health allocations within the World Health Organization’s Global Health Initiative. In 2011, he became founding chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Penn. The university had previously had a center focused on these areas, but forming a department enabled Dr. Emanuel to recruit faculty. Since 2011, the department has grown from 3 faculty members to 24. “Most medical schools now have a bioethics faculty member, but only a few have an intensive research program,” he says. When he is not busy trying to solve major societal problems, Dr. Emanuel manages to fit in some time for fun. He is an avid biker, traveler, cook, and foodie. He recently added “chocolatier” to the list by partnering with Askinosie Chocolate in Springfield, Missouri, to create the Zeke Bar, a dark chocolate, organic, vegan, certified kosher and gluten-free confection sourced from Criollo cacao beans from Madagascar.