Title: President, HealthPartners Institute; chief science officer, HealthPartners
Other offices:
- Adjunct professor for Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston
- Co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Service’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030 (aka “Healthy People 2030”)
- Member of the Food and Nutrition Board at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
- Chair, Roundtable on Obesity Solutions at the National Academy of Medicine
- Founding and past-president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion
Joined the Institute: 1994
Education and training: PhD, exercise physiology, Texas A&M University; postdoctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh.
Overview/research interests: Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with practical applications of programs and practices, policies and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being. His work applies to the workplace, the health system setting, and the community and involves development of new models to improve health and well-being at the research, practice and policy levels. He is widely published in both scientific and practice literature and is an international speaker on population health and well-being.
Current research activities and funding:
- Effectiveness of interventions that integrate health promotion and occupational safety and health
- The role of business engagement in community health and well-being
- The impact of physical activity and sedentary behavior on employee performance and productivity
- The application of systems science in health policy
- The impact of health reporting on corporate market performance
- Summary measures of health and well-being
