HealthPartners titles: Cardiologist and epidemiologist, medical director for well-being for the health plan

Academic appointment: Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota

Other offices: Consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the prevention and management of chronic diseases, member of the faculty of the WHO’s noncommunicable disease-prevention course.

Joined the Institute: 2004

Education and training: MD, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; MSPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; postdoctoral training, University of Minnesota.

Overview/research interests: Building community-based heart disease-prevention programs; 204 peer-reviewed papers, 3 books, 41 book chapters and 40 invited editorials. Member of both the first US Preventive Services Task Force and the federal panels that authored evidence-based guidelines for treating tobacco dependence (issued by the US Public Health Service in June 2000 and by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research in 1996). While professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn., he developed and directed CardioVision 2020, a project to make Olmsted County, Minn. the healthiest county in the country by 2020. He also helped build the Southeastern Minnesota Women’s Health Project to increase screening rates for breast and cervical cancer.

Interests include measuring and promoting well-being, addressing the social determinants of health, delivery of preventive services and prevention of chronic diseases through lifestyle interventions.

Current research activities and funding:

• Creating a measurable definition of health and well-being to permit measurement of the Triple Aim performance
• Promoting population well-being through lifestyle interventions directed at nutrition, physical activity, abstinence from tobacco, prudent use of alcohol, sleep and healthy thinking
• Designing office systems to improve the care of patients with chronic conditions