Jennifer Walter, MD, PhD, MS

Jennifer K. Walter, MD, PhD, MS, is Director of the Department of Medical Ethics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an attending physician with the Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care, the hospital’s internationally recognized Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT). She is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a secondary faculty member in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Dr. Walter’s work as a clinician, ethicist, and researcher is focused on improving communication and shared decision-making between healthcare providers and families of children with serious illness. She has worked at the intersection of clinical practice and bioethics emphasizing the physician-patient relationship and family-centered care. Her current research focuses on facilitating and improving communication between the healthcare team and families of children with serious illness. She is developing interventions to better train interprofessional teams in collaboration and communication to improve outcomes for patients and families. 

Dr. Walter has written normative ethics pieces about clinical practice challenges as well as conducted a national survey of pediatric ethics consultation work which has provided the most comprehensive understanding of the scope, funding, and accessibility of pediatric ethics consultation services in the United States.

She has received grant funding from the National Palliative Care Research Center and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and is a Cambia Foundation Sojourns' Scholar.