Michael McGinnis, a physician and epidemiologist, is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (1999), now serving as NAM Senior Scholar, Leonard D. Schaeffer Executive Officer of the NAM and Executive Director of the NAM Leadership Consortium. He is the architect of the NAM’s Learning Health System Initiative catalyzing collaborative national progress in the alignment of science, informatics, incentives, and culture for continuous improvement in health and health care. Our Shared Commitments represents the promise and expectations of this work. To provide platforms for societal uptake of this and other NAM contributions, Dr. McGinnis also established Action Collaboratives for cooperative projects of multiple stakeholders, and the periodic publication vehicle, NAM Perspectives. 

A longstanding field leader, Dr. McGinnis has helped shape the field of population health in various ways. The Fries Prize for Improving Health cited him for “fundamentally transforming our nation’s understanding about how to improve health by re-conceptualizing the nation’s perspective on its leading health threats and establishing the Healthy People process of national goals and objectives to target action.” His article with William Foege, Actual Causes of Death (JAMA, 1993) integrated epidemiologic studies to demonstrate, qualitatively and quantitatively, that most of the leading killers of Americans—e.g. heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes—had preventable root sources, many of which were behavioral, environmental, and social in nature. Building on this work, he and colleagues later showed, again quantitatively and qualitatively, that the health of individuals and populations is the result of the interplay of dynamics in five domains: genetic predispositions, behavioral choices, social circumstances, physical environments, and medical care (The Case for More Active Policy Attention to Health Promotion, Health Affairs 2002).

Dr. McGinnis’ has accelerated the impact of health and medical science through the development of practical tools and strategies for front line application of the evidence. As Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health & Human Services in four Presidential Administrations (1977 to 1995, a tenure unusual for political and policy posts), he held leadership responsibilities for federal activities in disease prevention and health promotion. In this period, he conceived and launched several still ongoing national programs: the Healthy People national goals and objectives (above), the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (with USDA), and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Later, as Senior Vice President and head of the Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (1999-2005), Dr. McGinnis led development of the platform for the Foundation’s shift to sustained leadership and funding in population health science and the social determinants of health.

With a global health interest from the outset of his career, Dr. McGinnis coordinated U.S.-Eastern European health exchange programs and later served as state director in India for the WHO smallpox eradication program (1974-5), developing the surveillance system for the country-wide post-eradication operations. In post-war Bosnia as Chair of the World Bank/European Commission Task Force on Health & Human Services (1995-6), he led development of the signed agreement on priorities and strategies for rebuilding the health and human services capacity—the first such agreement outside the Dayton Accords.

Dr. McGinnis’ publications include more than 200 articles and book chapters, and 20 edited books. Various 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 Health Improvement (2018). His degrees are from Berkeley (1966), UCLA (1971), and Harvard (1977).