Nico Pronk, Ph.D.
President, HealthPartners Institute; Chief Science Officer, HealthPartners, Inc.
Nico Pronk, Ph.D., M.A., FACSM, FAWHP, is President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, Inc. and holds faculty appointments as Affiliate Full Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota, School of Public Health in Minneapolis, Minnesota and as Visiting Scientist of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.
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.
Dr. Pronk was confirmed by the White House to serve as co-chair of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for the year 2030 (aka “Healthy People 2030”). He is a current member of the Food and Nutrition Board and Chair for the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He serves on the board of directors for the Health Enhancement Research Organization and is the founding and past president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion.
He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literatures and is an international speaker on population health and well-being. Dr. Pronk received his doctorate degree in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his post-doctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
HealthPartners Institute is one of the largest medical research and education centers in the Midwest, the Institute has about 450 studies underway each year, trains more than 700 medical residents and fellows and more than 500 students. HealthPartners, founded in 1957 as a cooperative, is an integrated, non-profit, member-governed health system providing health care services and health plan financing and administration. It's the largest consumer governed nonprofit health care organization in the United States.