DC Health's Acting General Counsel, Elaine Block, has been a District employee for close to 14 years. She comes to the agency from the Department of Aging and Community Living, where she served as General Counsel; before that, Elaine held several positions at the DC Office of the Attorney General, first as an Assistant Attorney General in the Legal Counsel Division, and more recently as Ethics Counsel to the Attorney General. Before arriving in DC in 2011, Elaine was a senior associate with Dewey Pegno & Kramarsky LLP, a commercial litigation firm in New York City, and then a member of the federal Habeas Corpus section of the New York Attorney Generals' Office of the Solicitor General. She began her career as a prosecutor in Brooklyn, where she focused on domestic violence and appellate cases. 

Elaine has a strong background in legal and government ethics. In addition to her former ethics role at the DC OAG, she recently concluded service as Chair of the DC Bar's Legal Ethics Committee; she is currently an alternate hearing committee member for the Bar's Board on Professional Responsibility. She has also taught Professional Responsibility at Georgetown University Law Center. 

Elaine is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where she received a B.A. in English and a joint J.D./M.P.Aff. from the Law School and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.