Michael McGinnis, MD, MPP, is a physician and epidemiologist who lives and works in Washington, DC. Through his scholarly contributions, government service, and work in philanthropy, he has been a long-time contributor to national and global leadership in population health and medicine. Currently the Leonard D. Schaefer Executive Officer of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), NAM Senior Scholar, and Executive Director of the NAM Leadership Consortium, previously he was founding Director, respectively, of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Health Group, the World Health Organization’s Office for Health Reconstruction in Bosnia, and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and federal Office of Research Integrity (interim). At DHHS, he held appointments as Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, with continuous policy leadership responsibility for federal activities in disease prevention and health promotion from 1977 to 1995, a tenure unusual for political and policy posts. Among the notable programs initiated and implemented at his behest are the national Healthy People process establishing national health goals and objectives (1979-present), the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (1980-present), the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (with USDA, 1980-present), and the Public Health Functions Steering Group’s Ten Essential Services of Public Health (1994-present), the RWJF Active Living family of programs (2000-2014), the RWJF Young Epidemiology Scholars Program (2001-2012), the RWJF Health and Society Scholars Program (2002-2015), the NAM/IOM report Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health & Health Care (2015), the NAM/IOM Learning Health System initiative (2006-present), and the forthcoming Commission on Investment Imperatives for a Healthy Nation. Most remain prominent elements on the health policy landscape. Internationally, he served in Bosnia (1995-6) as Chair of the joint World Bank/European Commission Task Force on Reconstruction of the Health and Human Services Sector, and in India (1974-5) as epidemiologist and state Director for the World Health Organization’s successful smallpox eradication program. National recognitions include the Public Health Distinguished Service Award (1994), Health Leader of the Year Award (1997), Public Health Hero Award (2013), and the Fries Prize for Contributions to Health Improvement (2018). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (1999), Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Nursing (hon), and American Association of Nurse Practitioners (hon). He attended Berkeley (BA), UCLA (MD, MA), and Harvard (MPP).
Michael McGinnis, MD, MPP
