About
Janet Fleetwood, PhD, MPH, is a professor in the Department of Community Health and Prevention in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Her current work focuses on urban issues in public health, bioethics, and social justice, especially related to food scarcity, food safety, and food waste.
Dr. Fleetwood holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Southern California and an MPH from the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She also holds a certificate in Global Health.
Dr. Fleetwood served as a bioethics professor at the Drexel University College of Medicine from 1986 to 2009, and as the bioethicist for Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital, where she led the hospital ethics committee and collaboratively created key hospital policies and implemented projects on topics including informed consent, confidentiality, and treatment at the end of life. Dr. Fleetwood has published her work in major academic journals and has obtained funding from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Greenwall Foundation, the Culpeper Foundation, and the van Ameringen Foundation.
Dr. Fleetwood became a Drexel University Provost’s Fellow in 2005, and then transitioned from her faculty position to full-time university administration in 2009, subsequently serving as Associate Vice Provost, Vice Provost, and then Senior Vice Provost until 2016. In these administrative roles she led the development and implementation of Drexel University’s Strategic Plan, founded the Office of Faculty Development & Equity/Office of Faculty Affairs, and spearheaded a wide range of faculty and academic initiatives and policies. In 2016, she stepped away from university administration and returned to the faculty to focus on urban public health. From 2021 to 2022 Dr. Fleetwood served as the Interim Chair of the Department of Community Health and Prevention.