Senior Investigator, Early Sickle Mortality Prevention
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Dr. Courtney Fitzhugh received her Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1996, and her Doctor of Medicine from the University of California, San Francisco, in 2001. During medical school, she participated in the NIH Clinical Research Training Program, where she studied with Dr. John Tisdale in NIDDK/NHLBI.

She completed a combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center, followed in 2005 by a combined fellowship in adult hematology and pediatric hematology-oncology at the NIH and Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Fitzhugh returned to the NHLBI in 2007. She was appointed Assistant Clinical Investigator in 2012 and became a Lasker Clinical Research Scholar and Clinical Tenure Track Investigator in 2016. She was promoted to Senior Investigator in 2026. She is a member of the American Society of Hematology and the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy.

Her research focuses on developing approaches to hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) that could expand access to this treatment, particularly for adults who may not tolerate conventional high-dose chemotherapy. She also studies the long-term effects of curative therapies on organ health and investigates factors associated with complications following treatment.