Elizabeth Cox, M.D., Ph.D.

Elizabeth Cox is a tenured professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, where she directs the Prevention Research Center. In this role, she leads a team of multidisciplinary faculty and staff on a mission to enhance health and health equity for low-income women, infants, and families. She is actively involved in policy and advocacy efforts related to the social determinants of health that shape the lives of children. Her motivation for this work is rooted in her experiences growing up in rural West Virginia.

Cox is a nationally recognized expert in stakeholder-engaged health research. She conducts systems-level research that leverages the voices of children and families to deliver safer, higher quality health care. For example, she led efforts to develop an evidence-based checklist intervention that enhances patient safety by promoting family-centered rounding in children’s hospitals. She also served three years as an advisor on the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s panel on Improving Health Care Systems. As the associate director of the UW Primary Care Research Post-doctoral Fellowship, she is invested in growing the clinician-scientist workforce that will discover new knowledge to meet our nation’s evolving health challenges.

Cox received her BS in chemistry and her medical degree from West Virginia University, in Morgantown, WV. She completed her pediatric residency and a doctorate in Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in Madison, WI. She is board certified in pediatrics and worked as a traveling physician in over 80 different US locations, including Federally Qualified Health Centers and the Indian Health Service, before joining the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health’s general pediatric faculty in 2007.