Commissioner Vivian Ilma Ebbesen-Fludd, MS, RN, BSN
July 2007 – February 2009
Vivian Ilma Ebbesen-Fludd was nominated by Gov. John P. de Jongh Jr. on June 28, 2007, to head the Virgin Islands Department of Health. She assumed the role of Commissioner of Health on July 2, 2007, and was confirmed unanimously on August 30, 2007, by members of the 27th Legislature. She resigned the position in February 2009.
Ebbesen-Fludd was the first Registered Nurse and the fourth female to hold the position of Health Commissioner and adhered to the belief that health care for all is a right and not a privilege. As Health Commissioner she revamped the VIDOH Organizational Chart, and established the offices of Public Health Preparedness, Medical Affairs, and Capital Projects and Planning in efforts to improve efficiency within the Department’s various local and federal programs as well as to improve services to the community.
Ebbesen-Fludd graduated from St. Joseph High School in1984. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), four years later, from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and in 1994 earned a Master of Science (MS) degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore as a Perinatal-Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS). Her long and distinctive career in Health began in 1988 upon returning home from college at the St. Croix Hospital and Community Health Center in the area of Postpartum, Nursery and Labor and Delivery. A year later she returned to the U.S. Mainland and began a career in Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. In 1990, she relocated to Baltimore, Maryland to work at Johns Hopkins Hospital Labor and Delivery Unit where she remained until 1995 before returning home to work for the V.I. Department of Health as director of the DOH-affiliated Ingeborg Nesbitt Clinic – Urgent Care Center. She was later named Executive Director of Frederiksted Health Center/Ingeborg Nesbitt Clinic, a position she held until 2000. She was eventually named Executive Director Frederiksted Health Care Inc. and served in that position until her appointment as Health Commissioner in July 2007.
During her tenure, she was credited for transforming the then DOH-affiliated Frederiksted Health Center/Ingeborg Nesbitt Clinic to Frederiksted Health Care, Inc., a private not-for-profit and self-sustaining corporation providing health primary healthcare services through federal and local funds. In her capacity as Executive Director of Frederiksted Health Care Inc., she is credited with chartering the territory’s only federally funded School-based Health Center at St. Croix Educational Complex in 2003.
Ebbesen-Fludd has held several teaching positions on various civic and medical organizations and served as both a chairperson and a member of numerous departmental and institutional committees at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She received a Joint Appointment as a part-time Faculty/Instructor at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and served as a Hospital-Based Neonatal Resuscitation Instructor. In addition to her professional responsibilities and activities at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she also was an Associate Instructor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Nursing; and taught part-time at Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing; Coppin State University School of Nursing, Mergenthaler Vocational High School and the University of the Virgin Islands School of Nursing. She has served as President of the V.I. Nurses Association – St. Croix – District I; Board of Directors and Advisory Council for the V.I. Perinatal Partnership Inc.; the Department of
Human Services Head Start Policy Advisory Council; the National Network of Libraries Regional Advisory Council; the American Cancer Society; the American Nurses Associations; Sigma Theta Tau National Honor Society of Nursing and the National Association of Female Executive (NAFE).
Ebbesen-Fludd was recognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), through its Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) program, for excellence in practice and commitment to the provision of primary healthcare services as well as from a variety of local organizations for her distinguished service to her community.
