Alexis Thompson, MD, MPH, has been named Associate Director for Health Disparities and Special Population Initiatives at the Lurie Cancer Center. In this new senior leadership position, Dr. Thompson will strengthen the community outreach and service programs of the Office of Health Disparities and Special Population Initiatives (HDSPI) and enhance the efforts of Shaan Trotter, MS, who serves as HDSPI’s administrative director.

Dr. Thompson is currently the Medical and Scientific Director of Hematology at Children’s Memorial Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her clinical interests include hemoglobinopathies, bone marrow failure syndromes, and stem cell transplantation in pediatric patients. Her laboratory research is focused on developmentally regulated genes in early hematopoiesis.

Dr. Thompson completed her undergraduate education at Pomona College, where she majored in zoology. She received her MD from Tulane University School of Medicine. She then received a Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr Thompson completed her postgraduate training in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Upon completion of her Fellowship, Dr. Thompson joined the faculty at UCLA, where she was Director of the UCLA Sickle Cell Anemia Program, served on the UCLA Medical Center Cancer Committee, the Blood and Blood Derivatives Committee, and was Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA School of Medicine. 

In 2001, Dr Thompson was named the A. Watson and Sarah Armour Endowed Chair for Blood Diseases and Cancer at Children’s Memorial Hospital. She has served on the Board of Directors for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), and is currently on the Medical Advisory Boards for the Cooley’s Anemia Foundation and the Sickle Cell Disease Association of Illinois. In her current position, Dr. Thompson is an investigator on NIH-funded multi-center clinical trials as well as her own institutional clinical studies in thalassemia, sickle cell disease and hemophilia.