Donald Milton Jensen MD, FACP, FAASLD

Dr. Donald Milton Jensen, MD, FACP, FAASLD is a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and in the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the Rush Medical College. Dr. Jensen received his undergraduate (B.S.) and medical (M.D.) degrees from the University of Illinois. He completed a medicine residency at Rush Medical Center in Chicago where he also served as Chief Medical Resident. After completing a gastroenterology fellowship at Rush, Dr. Jensen traveled to King’s College Hospital in London, U.K., for a liver research fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Roger Williams. He returned to Rush as a faculty member in the Section of Hepatology, and in 1992 he became the Director of the section. In 2005, Dr. Jensen accepted a position at the University of Chicago as Director of the Center for Liver Disease until his temporary retirement in December 2014. In 2016, he returned to academic medicine with an appointment at Rush University Medical Center, and in 2021 was named the Richard B. Capps Emeritus Professor.

Dr. Jensen’s research interest has focused on newer therapies for hepatitis C and access to care. He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles, invited reviews and editorials, as well as 23 book chapters, and three books. He was a founding member and co-chair of the important AASLD/IDSA Practice Guidelines for hepatitis C. He holds a U.S. and European patent for the development of an agarose gel electrophoresis assay for amylase isoenzymes. He has been an Associate Editor for the journal HEPATOLOGY and an editorial board member of other publications. He was recently Treasurer and Governing Board member of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and co-chair of the Tomorrow’s Cures campaign for the AASLD Foundation. He is a steering committee member of the Alliance for Patient Access (APA) advocating for hepatitis C therapy for the underserved. He is the recent co-chair of the Illinois Hepatitis Elimination Project (PHP) to eliminate hepatitis C in Illinois by 2030.

Dr. Jensen has a long history of service and leadership of the American Liver Foundation (ALF) dating to the late 1980s. He has served as board chairman and MAC member of the ALF Great lakes Division and has been a past member of the ALF national board of directors. He has advocated on behalf of the ALF in Washington, D.C. on several occasions and participated in numerous fundraising activities including Walks, and the Chicago marathon (four times), and was instrumental in the initial Academic Debates founded in Illinois and is now a national event. He has been honored by the ALF Great Lakes Division with the Physician of the Year on two occasions.